The Message Job
by JamiW
Summary: Third in the "Free" series, preceded by "Free" and "The Corridor" - please read those first, or you will likely be lost. For new readers, these stories are all action/casefile stories with a good dose of B/A and some M/C on the side
1. Chapter 1

**Bobby POV**

* * *

Three weeks after Vincenzo Masarro escaped from a prison transport bus, there was still no sign of him. He had just completed his arraignment and was on his way back to Rikers when it happened. It was like something straight out of the movies: a truck pulled in front of the bus and caused a crash, thugs jumped from the truck, killed the guards, and sprung Masarro. And then he had disappeared into thin air.

In the mean time, Alex and I were back on full duty. Her leg was not one hundred percent, but she would never admit that to anyone but me.

Our relationship was going along better than I could have ever hoped. I'm not going to say we don't fight, because we do. We definitely do. But then we make-up. And I've finally quit worrying so much about the making-up part. I know it's coming, even when I'm wrong or I've screwed up some kind of bad, she will forgive me, just like I always forgive her. It's a completely new experience for me.

The biggest thing over the past few weeks that has caused rifts between us is this damn Masarro situation. I'm scared to death that something is going to happen to her. She's scared to death that something is going to happen to me. Where does that leave us? A little on edge and a lot over-protective.

The first few nights after the escape, Ross insisted on keeping a detail on us. That meant that we couldn't spend the night at each other's places. I finally put my foot down, stating that the security couldn't go on forever and we had no way of knowing whether Masarro would ever actually come after us or not. Ross relented.

Since then, Alex has spent every night at my place. On the weekends, we go to her place, do some laundry and pack her up for the week. We should probably consider a more permanent fix, but what we're doing suits both of us just fine for now. That, and I'm a little bit too chicken to bring it up.

So for two weeks, we caught up on all of our paperwork at the office and then last week we got back on case rotation. We also spent a lot of our off-time with Logan and Barek. Alex seems to enjoy the camaraderie, and if I'm honest with myself, so do I.

Last Wednesday, Mike and Carolyn stopped by.

"We're going up to Boston for a long weekend," Carolyn had said.

"So stay out of trouble for the next four days, because you're _not_ calling us," Mike had added.

"Mike," Carolyn had reprimanded him with a swat to his head. Then she smiled sweetly at me and Alex. "Call us if you need us."

"Hopefully, we won't need you. You guys have a great time," Alex had told them.

"Yeah," I had said. "And you call _us_ if _you_ run into any trouble."

Logan gave me his classic eye roll and then we moved on to other topics. They left a little later that evening, and then headed for Boston the next morning, so we hadn't talked to them since. They were due back tonight.

So now it was Sunday and that was the day we usually went to Alex's place. After our first week together, when she had gone home alone and we'd both been bored in our respective apartments, I started going with her.

"You ready?" I asked Alex as she came into the living room. We hadn't been long out of bed, even though it was nearing noon. I looked up from my magazine and saw that she clearly wasn't ready. She was wearing my t-shirt, which was her clothing of choice on our lazy mornings, and nothing else.

"Ready for something," she said in a low tone as she came to stand in front of me. Her words and sexy smile had me hard in an instant. More than a month with her and I still couldn't get enough. I wondered if the newness would ever wear off. Probably, but then I figured it would be replaced by something equally interesting.

"Are you being a tease, Detective Eames?" I asked although my husky voice betrayed the nonchalance I was going for.

"Not at all. It's not being a tease if I'm willing to go the distance," she replied. She stood a few inches away from me and slowly looked me up and down. Then she grabbed the hem of the t-shirt, pulled the garment off of her, and turned to stroll back into the bedroom.

_What has gotten into her?_ I wondered, although I absolutely was not going to complain. In the time it took me to think that thought, I had crossed the living room, gone down the hall and was in the bedroom, shedding my clothes along the way. She was standing on the far side of the room, so I went to her and pulled her into my arms.

"What do you want?" she asked suggestively.

"You started this," I said easily. "I'm all yours. What do _you_ want?"

"Well, there was this one idea I had…"

A little while later, after a considerable and yet insufficient amount of time was spent worshipping every inch of her body, I left the bed and went to get dressed again. At my age, such sustained sexual activity would likely be the death of me, but I was perfectly fine with that.

"So, my apartment?" she asked cheerily after she'd dressed.

"Okay. Let's go."

"Mike and Carolyn should be back tonight. Do you want to see if they want to have dinner?" Alex asked as we drove to her place.

"Sounds great to me," I agreed. "Mike said he would call when they got back in town. Although I don't think he expected to actually make it the whole four days without us calling him in some kind of crisis."

Alex laughed and gave me a meaningful look after she parked the car.

"What?"

"You," she said simply. "You actually made a joke about our misfortunes. I like you like this." She reached across the seat and rubbed her palm along my scruffy face. I tried to avoid a razor on the weekends. It saved time, and for some reason the disheveled look turned Alex on. She kissed me reverently and I returned the emotion. We didn't usually need words. Then she got out of the car and I walked with her into her place.

On the way up the stairs, I spouted out words before my brain could sensor them.

"We should think about selling this place," I said. Alex stopped walking and stared at me. I panicked.

"Oh, I mean some time…not right now. I mean…um…we just come here to… um…clean it, and so maybe…um…at some point in the future we should think about maybe…um…selling it."

"Bobby, are you asking me to move in with you?" she questioned with a tease in her voice. "Because it sounds an awful lot like that's what you're asking."

"I…um…only…um…"

"Bobby. I think it's a great idea. And you're right, we don't have to decide right this minute, but we can definitely talk about it."

She turned and continued up the stairs and I let myself break out into a grin. _Whew._ Why was that stuff so hard for me?

Alex was a few feet in front of me when she opened her front door. And she didn't scream, because I mean, hey – she's Alex Eames. But she made a noise that had me on full alert and I rushed ahead the last few feet.

There, inside her front door, was a dead body.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't know him?" I clarified.

"No," she replied. I watched her carefully and noticed the precise moment when she slipped back into detective mode. "No, I've never seen him before."

We fully entered the apartment and closed the door behind us. The smell was overpowering, and I wondered how we hadn't noticed it when we were still in the hall. _Distracted, probably._

We did a quick search of the rooms and found her place to be empty.

"The door was locked, right?"

"Right."

I bent down and took a closer look. The bullet hole was right through the eye.

"Alex," I said, calling her attention to the eye.

"It's a message job," she replied flatly. Vincenzo Masarro had come a-calling.

"It means he's watching."

"Clearly not very well if he thought I would be home to find this guy sooner."

"We need to call Rodgers," I said, ignoring the sick feeling in my stomach.

"You mean call it in."

"No, just Rodgers." I couldn't bring myself to look away from the body even though I knew Alex was looking at me.

"Why?" she asked after a moment.

"This guy's been dead awhile," I stated. Then I finally tore my eyes away and stood up, meeting her gaze.

"So…if we call it in, they'll want to know when it was brought here, and if it turns out the body was here for days, then why didn't I see it before now," she concluded.

"Right," I said with a nod.

"Why is it that it seems like we are always scrambling at every turn to cover our actions?" she asked in frustration. "You know what? No. I'm a grown woman. If I don't sleep in my own apartment at night, it's none of anybody's damn business. They don't have to know _where_ I was, just that I wasn't _here_."

"Okay," I agreed. She did have a point. "Okay, you're right. Let's call it in."

"Ross is going to insist on security again."

"Probably."

"God _damn_ it!" she yelled out. She was madder than I've seen her in a long time. She started pacing angrily around the room.

"Why does he have to play fucking games? If he wants to kill me, just fucking do it!"

"Alex," I began, but then I stopped. She had the right to blow off a little steam. After all, she had a dead guy in her foyer. Probably one that had been dead for several days, and it would take a miracle to get that stench out of her apartment.

I looked over the body again, waiting patiently for her to regain her composure. She walked and muttered obscenities for a few minutes and then she stopped. I looked up and saw that she stood stock still in the kitchen in front of the refrigerator.

"Goren," she said, clearly in full work mode. It was a form of protection against this personal attack.

"Yeah, Eames?" I asked, walking into the kitchen. She nodded towards the door of the fridge. There was a newspaper clipping taped to it.

The article was about the drug raid at Floyd Bennett Field, and there was a picture of me and Logan as we stood on the pier after getting off the Harbor Patrol boat. The photo had been taken just as Alex was being loaded onto the ambulance, as only the edge of the gurney was visible. I remembered the article, which had been published the following day. Funny though, I didn't remember there being a media chopper there at all.

But the article now was clipped and hanging on Alex's fridge. And she clearly hadn't done it, because the photo had two circles, one each drawn around me and Mike. There were large X's over each of our faces.

"Well," I began, trying to sound confident. "It's not like this is a surprise. We had a feeling he would come after us."

"Mike, too? You and I are the ones that killed Mariella."

Alex's cell rang, interrupting our speculation. She looked at the display before she answered.

"It's Carolyn."

"Don't mention this to her yet. Tell her you'll call her back." I wanted to get our thoughts organized first. They weren't coming back into town until later in the evening, so they were safe for now.

"Hi, Carolyn," Alex said with forced cheerfulness. She listened for a second and then her face fell.

"Alex?" I asked cautiously. She let her hand with the phone in it drop down to her side.

"Mike's missing."

TBC...


	2. Chapter 2

**Alex POV**

* * *

Carolyn Barek is a professional. She worked for the FBI. She worked for the NYPD. And now she writes her own ticket, using her creative and insightful mind to help law enforcement solve difficult cases.

But despite all her training, and all that she's seen, she was about to come unglued.

Her voice had been calm, her carefully constructed composure still in place, but I could tell that she was about to break.

Once I got a handle on my own reaction, I put the phone back to my ear and asked her to give me the details. I listened intently while Bobby took over my earlier job of pacing through my apartment.

"He went to get the car and he didn't come back," she stated simply.

"Where were you?"

"We were still at the hotel here in Boston. I was checking out while he was going to get the car from the parking garage."

"And no one has tried to contact you?"

"No," she said quietly.

"Have you called the Boston Police?"

"He's an adult. I can file a report, but they won't really consider him missing until he's been gone at least twenty-four hours, and so far it's been less than two."

"What did you find in the parking garage?" I asked. I had no doubt that she had already gone to check it out.

"The car is there. Our bags are in the trunk, but there is no evidence that he got into the car."

"His cell phone?"

"It's unaccounted for, but it must be off. I already tried to track him."

"So he was grabbed some time between loading the bags and getting into the driver's seat," I stated.

"Right," she agreed. She paused for a minute, but the she asked quietly, "This is Masarro, isn't it?"

I wanted to say no. Or at least that I didn't know. I wanted to say anything but the truth. But she's my friend, and I respect her too much to be anything other than honest.

"Yes," I answered. And then I told her about the body and the article.

"Oh my God," she whispered.

"Carolyn, we'll find him. I promise."

"It's the mafia, Alex. I know how these people work."

"This is a scare tactic. Just like the dead body in my apartment." I had the thought that if Masarro planned to kill Mike, then he would've done it and left _his_ body in my apartment. But I didn't say that out loud.

"Well, it's working," she admitted. "I don't know what to do next."

"Where are you right now?"

"I'm in a coffee shop down the street from the hotel."

"Have you felt like anyone was watching you?"

"No. I left the car in the garage and then I walked several miles and stopped in a lot of places before I came in here. I wanted to make sure." _Still a good cop_.

"Okay. Stay there then. Bobby and I will be up there in three hours."

"Alex, it's two hundred miles."

"I know. That's why we're going to leave now. Bobby can call Rodgers from the car. We'll get her to come here and check out this body. Call my cell if you need anything."

"Okay." I hung up the phone and looked at Bobby.

"We're going to Boston."

"And we're back to just asking Rodgers to come?" he asked me.

"If we make an official report, we'll be here for hours at the very least, giving statements and answering questions. We can't leave Carolyn alone in Boston if Masarro has gone up there after them."

"You think Rodgers will do this on the sly?"

"I know she'll do it," I said emphatically. "She owes us. Besides that, I think she's got a thing for you now that she's seen you in the buff." It probably wasn't the best time to be making a joke, but it's how I cope. And of course, Bobby knew me well enough to play along.

"And that doesn't make you a little jealous? Because, I don't know, but I think I could give Ross a run for his money." I flashed him a grateful grin and we got the hell out of my putrid apartment.

"We should tell Ross," I decided as we climbed into my car. We had to make a quick stop by Bobby's place to let him grab a bag. We didn't know how long we'd be gone. I still had a few clean clothes at his place, too, so I was going to take those. I didn't want anything porous from my apartment. Not until I could wash it first.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I don't want to keep so many secrets. Ross will understand our need to go to Boston. He can sit on this case for just a little while."

Bobby was quiet for several minutes and I knew he was analyzing all of the pros and cons of letting our boss in on our situation. I wasn't sure it was the best thing to do, but it was the right thing. The events over the past six weeks had changed him, and for the better. He still liked to ride our asses, but I felt more like I could trust him than ever before. He was willing to keep Moran in the dark about our relationship as long as we didn't flaunt it, so I thought he deserved to be kept in the loop.

"Okay. We'll call Ross first," he agreed, but I noticed he didn't make a move for his phone.

"Are we going to wait until we've left the city?"

"No, I just thought maybe you would do it while I run in my place to get our bags?" It was a statement, but he said it like a question. And then he laid on the charm.

"You just handle him so much better than I do, and…"

"Fine," I conceded as we pulled up in front of his place. "I'll do it." He winked at me and hopped out of the car before I could change my mind. I made the call.

"Eames?" Ross asked by way of greeting.

"Yes, Captain. I'm sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but we have a situation."

"Another situation."

"Yes, sir."

"Is this situation just getting started, or am I coming in on the tail end of it?" he asked sarcastically. _Okay, I deserved that_.

"It's new."

"Masarro?"

"We think so. I found a dead body in my apartment today, bullet through the eye."

"What? Have you called it in yet?"

"This is me, calling it in. Goren was with me when I found it, but we can't hang around for questioning. We've got to get to Boston. Mike Logan has disappeared."

I filled him in on everything I knew, and finished up by asking him to have Liz take a look at the body. I told him I suspected that it had been there for days, and to his credit, he didn't ask why I had only found it today.

"We can't sit on this for long. I'll ask Liz to go over there and do a preliminary look-see, and I'll authorize you two to go to Boston, but the report is going to have to be filed."

"Captain, we can't have the press getting wind of it. We don't want the mob to know what we know. And we really don't want the Feds to get involved. They'll pressure for protective custody. And if the connection is made that we've gone to Boston, they could find out about Mike missing, and then they'll try to take over _that_ investigation, and…"

"Okay, Eames. You made your point. I'll squash it for forty-eight hours. If this guy's been dead as long as you think, a couple more days won't hurt. Get your asses up to Boston and find Logan."

"Yes sir," I said with relief. "Thank you."

"I'll have Liz call you if she finds anything of value."

"And if she can i.d. the guy."

"Of course. And Eames…"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Be careful."

* * *

It was nearly six o'clock when we arrived in Boston. I drove like a maniac the whole way, and only got pulled over once. I thought about badging my way out of it, but then I went for sweet-talking him instead. No ticket.

"I had no idea you were so good at that," Bobby said once we were back to going ninety on the interstate.

"At persuasion? I've been using that my whole life. People underestimate me all of the time because of my size and gender. I simply play into that and let people think I am what I appear to be. It either gets me what I want, or it gives me the advantage of surprise if I have to switch it up and play hardball."

"I have never underestimated you," Bobby countered.

"No, you haven't," I agreed. "But you're probably the only one." Bobby gave me a funny look and I knew he was probably wondering about Joe. He never asked me about him. One of these days, I was going to have to open up about him. I didn't want Bobby living with the misconception that he was in another man's shadow.

We drove in silence through the outskirts of Boston. My thoughts went to Mike, and I hoped desperately that he was okay.

"Do you think Logan's still alive?" Bobby asked suddenly, our minds clearly in tune with each other.

"Yes," I replied quickly. Thinking anything else was simply unacceptable. "We need to pick up Carolyn and have her walk us through everything. She may have missed something in the parking garage."

"I wonder if there is security footage?"

"I don't know, but we need to find out. And quickly. I hate to think what they might be doing to him."

We picked up Carolyn from the coffee shop and went to the hotel. She was holding herself together remarkably well. Much better than I would be in her situation.

I ran inside the lobby to ask the clerk about the security tapes, and then met the others in the parking garage.

"You drove your car here?" Bobby asked as we walked up the ramp to the second level.

"Yeah, it's the dark blue Camry," she said, pointing toward the middle of the row. We kept a wide perimeter and closed in on the car slowly, checking the ground and nearby cars for evidence as we went.

"We don't know how many of these cars would have been here before," I stated.

"The white Ford, the tan pick-up and the red Miata were all here. That black one over there is new," Carolyn said immediately. I smiled at her encouragingly, tremendously impressed with her ability to absorb details in a crisis. _Always a cop first_.

"I think this is blood," Bobby said from the far side of the tan pick-up. The truck was parked two over from Carolyn's car, and the spot on the other side of it was empty.

"What?"

"Just a smudge, but I think maybe it's a palm," he said distractedly as he analyzed the substance from all angles. The pick-up had a black bed liner in it, but Bobby climbed up into the bed and got down on his knees to look more closely. Fortunately, there was no alarm.

"I think he grabbed for the truck. I bet the car was parked here, and he tried to hold onto to the truck to keep from being loaded into another vehicle."

"And he had blood on his hand," Carolyn clarified in a shaky voice.

"Yeah, but he was coherent enough to try to stop the abduction," I said. It was a good thing. They could've shot him right there in the garage if they wanted him dead.

"I'm going to see how that clerk is coming with the security footage," I said. We needed to find out what kind of car he had been taken in.

"I'm almost afraid to ask, but how'd you get him to let us see it?"

"I badged him, but I did it quickly. I _may_ have let him believe that we're BPD."

"Alex," Bobby warned.

"Hey, I didn't lie. If he assumed facts not in evidence then shame on him."

The three of us went into the lobby and the clerk waved me into the office.

"I've got it cued up for you. You said a car was broken into at twelve-ten? Because I don't see anything."

"If you don't mind, we'd like to look at it for just a minute. I'll come and get you when we're done," I said, ushering him out the door. Then I fast-forwarded the tape to twelve-thirty-five and hit play. The camera only had a partial view of the Camry, but hopefully it would be enough. After a minute, Mike came into view. Carolyn sucked in a breath and I hit pause.

"Maybe you should…"

"Play the tape, Alex," she said firmly. I pushed play.

Two thugs entered the garage a few seconds after Mike. They must have been watching from out on the sidewalk.

"Russo and DeMarco," Carolyn said quietly.

"You recognize them?"

"They're soldiers for the Masarro family."

We watched as Mike put the bags in the trunk and closed the lid. One of the thugs must have said something, because Mike turned around and faced them. One of them sucker punched him, but he came back with a nice upper cut. The three men brawled for several minutes, and it almost looked like Logan was winning, but then one goon caught him by the arms and the other one started pummeling him. He was defenseless at that point.

Once he submitted, they dragged him off camera.

We kept watching and after another minute, a car left the garage.

"There!" Carolyn said, pointing at the screen. Mike's head was visible in the backseat of a maroon Chevy Malibu.

"We've got a plate number and a car. Let's put Ross' new loyalty to the test and see what he can dig up for us."

TBC...


	3. Chapter 3

**Logan** **POV**

* * *

I thought I held my own pretty good considering it was two-on-one. It was mostly fear that kept me throwing punches. I was afraid that as soon as I went down, they would go after Carolyn.

But then I heard one of the mopes tell the other to hurry up and take me out because they had to get me the hell out of there. So I figured she would be safe for the time being. Good thing, because right about then, one guy grabbed my arms from behind and things got a little hazy after that.

Several blows later, they dragged me to a maroon Chevy. I reached out and grabbed for whatever I could get my hand on. It was the back of a pick-up. I knew my hand was bloody and I wanted to make sure to leave a mark. Not that I thought Carolyn would believe for one second that I had just walked away from her, but because it would show her what parking spot the goons were parked in. And maybe it would somehow help her find me.

I suspected that she had called Goren and Eames not too long after I disappeared. And knowing them, they were probably halfway to Boston before I was tied down to a folding chair in an abandoned warehouse. The old man stood in front of me dressed sharply in a dark pin-striped suit. It was so cliché I almost laughed out loud.

"Mike Logan."

"Vincenzo Masarro."

"So you _do_ know who I am."

"You know you could've just invited me over for tea instead of sending your two goons to rough me up."

Masarro tipped his head in my direction, and one of his henchmen clocked me in the jaw. _I guess they don't like a wiseass_.

"You've caused me a great deal of trouble and grief," he continued as though I hadn't just spit a mouthful of blood out on the floor near his feet.

"I get that a lot."

"I had to come all the way up to Boston," he said. "And I don't like to come up here. I don't like to invade another family's territory."

"You should've stayed at Rikers then."

"No, but see…I should actually thank you," he said as though I hadn't spoken. "Turns out you did me a favor by coming up here."

"Huh?"

"I've made some new friends here in Boston. And I found out that they don't like cops here any more than I like the ones in New York. I've got eyes everywhere now."

Great, just what we needed. More mobsters on our ass. I started to say something, but then I closed my mouth. If he wanted to talk I was going to let him. The more information he wanted to share, the better.

"See, me and the lady cop have got business to take care of. She killed my Mariella. The other guy, I'll get him too, but this lady…" he stopped talking and shook his head. I had to control the urge to react to the pure hatred I saw in his eyes when he talked about Eames. I also wasn't going to correct him that it was actually Goren's shots that caused the fatal wounds.

"I was going to be patient, let them get complacent, especially after Joey struck out finding their addresses. But then Dino here saw the lady cop at a bodega in Forest Hills last Sunday. He followed her home." My stomach lurched at the idea that Eames had been followed by this goon. _She could've been killed that day._

"Since I knew where she lived, I decided to give her a little present. You know, a little something to remember me by," he continued. "I thought that she would make a big production out of it, maybe even call the Fibbies for a little security. Then I could get close to all three of yous."

He winked at me when he mentioned the FBI. Did he have a mole on the inside? And what kind of present had he given Eames? I knew she was rarely at her place so it was a safe bet that she hadn't found it. Besides that, if she had found something, I know she would've called.

"But she doesn't scare easily. She's made of tougher stuff than I expected. She didn't react at all." _He definitely didn't know Eames if he was surprised by her toughness. _

"But now, thanks to you, I don't have to worry about an easy in. Now that I have you, she'll come to me. They both will."

Masarro snapped his fingers at his associate, and the guy pulled out a cell phone.

"Give me the number," he told me.

"What number?" I was trying to stall so that I could come up with a plan. I was going to end up giving him the number at some point, but I wanted to figure out what I was going to say first. What could I tell her that would clue them in on what was going on?

"For the lady cop. What's her name, Eames? You're going to call her and tell her that you managed to kill your kidnappers, but you're still trapped in the building. She'll come to your rescue, I'm sure."

"I don't know it." Now I was glad that I didn't have my cell. The two idiots in the parking garage hadn't taken it from me after they beat me up, but I'd been caught turning it on during the drive to the warehouse. One of them had snatched it from me and tossed it out the window. And of course, Eames' number was in there.

At my prolonged silence, Masarro nodded at the goon again, who proceeded to give me another pop to the jaw.

"Go ahead, keep hitting me there," I told the guy. "You break it and I can't talk."

"The number, Mr. Logan."

"212-555-kiss my ass."

* * *

When I woke up, I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but I did know that it was dark outside. There was no light coming through the broken windows of the warehouse. I was on my side on the floor with the chair still strapped to me. I tried to push myself up and get the chair upright, but everything on me hurt.

As the fog cleared from my brain, I assessed my situation. I appeared to be alone in the warehouse. They must have decided that I was bound up tight enough that they didn't feel the need to keep an eye on me. Or they were somewhere that wasn't visible from this main room.

I pulled my hands against the bindings on my wrists. It was rope, a good quality nylon. My hands were behind my back and secured over the backside of the chair. Each ankle was bound to a chair leg. _Fuck me._

I had to get out of here. Masarro was hell bent on avenging Mariella's death and he clearly blamed Eames for it. And now he had enlisted the help of the Irish mob. I had to get to her. I looked around the room again and formulated a plan.

I scooted across the floor to the edge of the room. The windows were broken which meant the glass had landed somewhere and I didn't see any evidence that a cleaning crew had come around lately. I felt around blindly and finally found what I was looking for: a nice-sized shard. I gripped it in my hands and began sawing awkwardly at the rope. I had no idea how long the guys had been gone or when they would be back so I worked as quickly as I could.

I was tearing my hands to shit, but I could also feel the rope weakening. After what felt like forever, I was able to pull free. My shoulders protested against the sudden movement, but I didn't have time to catalog my injuries. I reached down and took care of the rope around my ankles. As I was finishing the last one, I heard footsteps.

I hurried clumsily to my feet and shuffled to the door, taking the folding chair with me. Situated behind the door, I held the chair over my head.

The two goons who had snagged me from the parking garage entered the room. I took great delight in clocking the first one on the head with the chair. He sprawled onto the floor. I swung the chair around in an upward motion and caught the second guy on his chin just as he was aiming his gun. He didn't get the shot off. He flew backwards, falling onto the cement floor and the gun went flying in the other direction.

The first guy was out cold, but the second tried to get back up. Big mistake. I had a lot of pent up anger I needed to work off, and he caught the brunt of it. I felt no pain as I worked him over, getting payback for my earlier beat down.

The guy finally went to his knees and held up his hands in supplication.

"Where's Masarro?" I yelled.

"He's…he's coming."

"When?"

"Pretty soon. He's on the way."

"What are you guys supposed to be doing?"

"He still wants the phone number."

"He wants to lure her somewhere using me as bait?" The guy didn't answer so I kicked him again.

"Yeah, yeah," he said quickly.

"Why? He found her apartment. Why not just kill her there?"

"He wants her to suffer. He told Dino to take her from there, but then she didn't come back right away so he decided to do it this way."

"Why me? Why not her partner?" I had to find out all I could while I had this guy vulnerable. As soon as Masarro knew he'd squealed, he would be a dead man.

"Joey never could find him."

"Couldn't find him? The unlisted address threw this Joey guy for a loop?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, well Joey paid for that," he said with a laugh, blood spilling out from between broken teeth. "But you, you were easy. I went down to see Frankie. He gave up your plate number." I rolled my eyes and made a mental note to pay my favorite felon a visit in Sussex State Prison.

"So what is Masarro's plan for the lady cop?" I asked, wanting clarification.

"He said he's going to make an example out of her so that the cops stay out of Mafia business."

"By doing what?"

"He's gonna cut her up. Mail pieces of her back to the police." The goon started laughing again, so I brought the chair down on his head one more time just to shut him up. I know people think I'm an uncultured guy who likes to beat up on people, but I don't. These guys, though…they had it coming. And I didn't feel bad for one second about roughing them up. I searched through their jacket pockets and pulled out both cell phones, which I tucked into my own pocket. I also retrieved the gun that had gone flying and found another in the first guy's pocket. Then I got the hell out of there.

And not a moment too soon. As I left the warehouse and rounded the corner into an alleyway, I saw headlights. I hopped into a dumpster and watched as Masarro and Dino got out of a Bentley and went into the building. Then I climbed out and ran as fast as I could.

Italian mafia, Irish mob…The shit was really going to hit the fan now.

TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

**Bobby POV**

* * *

It was just after eight when Alex hung up with Ross.

"He was a wealth of information," she stated.

"Are you being sarcastic? Because sometimes I can't tell," Barek admitted. Alex barked out a laugh.

"No, I'm being serious. Okay, listen up."

We had checked into two rooms at the Wyndham which was a few blocks over from where Mike and Carolyn had been staying. We all sat together in one room to brainstorm.

I had commandeered one of the hotel laptops and Carolyn was blazing through information from the FBI database.

While she did that, I was pacing along the outer edge of the room trying to keep myself from panicking. It was tough having your friend missing, especially knowing he was in the hands of the mafia. But when Alex spoke, Carolyn and I both stopped what we were doing to give her our undivided attention.

"Ross says the car traces back to Dino Visucci."

"Any relation to Paulie?" I interrupted. Alex nodded.

"Ross is looking into that, but at a glance it looks like they were cousins."

"If he's still working with Masarro, then he might be a weak link," Carolyn offered. And she was right. If Dino knew that Mariella was behind his cousin's murder then he might not be so hot to avenge her death.

"New York City?" I asked Alex, getting back on track. The car definitely had New York plates.

"Yeah. He has an address listed in Queens. Ross is going to go over and check it out."

"Okay, good. What else?"

"Rodgers says the body was about four days dead. She said probably Wednesday. Lividity was consistent with him having been in that one spot as he went in and out of rigor. And she got an i.d."

"Who?"

"Joey Fabrizio. His prints popped in the system. Petty theft, assault, gambling."

"An all-around good guy," Carolyn said wryly.

"And known associates include Dino Visucci."

"So they popped another one of their own?" I asked. I wondered what he had done to deserve the honor. Alex just shrugged.

"So now we've got five names," Carolyn stated, jotting them down on a piece of paper. "Dino Visucci, Johnny Russo, Tony DeMarco, Vincenzo Masarro, and dead Joey Fabrizio."

"They've got to be getting a little thin," Alex commented. "They still have a dozen from their family in Rikers."

Carolyn's phone rang and she looked at the display and frowned.

"Hey, this might be something. I don't know this number."

"Answer it on speaker," I said. She punched the button and held the phone out.

"Hello," she said.

"Carolyn." It was Logan.

"Mike! Oh my God, where are you? Are you okay?"

"I got away from them. I'm holed up in a parking garage on A Street." His voice was rough and he sounded exhausted, but tremendous relief flowed through me with the knowledge that he was alive and had escaped.

"I've got Bobby and Alex here with me," she told him. "Stay right there. We're coming to get you."

An hour later, we were back at the hotel. Logan looked like hell and we had tried to get him to visit a hospital, but he refused. Partly because he said he was sure nothing was broken, and partly because he didn't want a hospital to have records of a visit. He was sounding a little paranoid, but once he filled us in about the Irish mob working with Masarro, I understood.

"So we've got them coming at us from all sides," I said. And here we were, out of our familiar territory again.

"We're safe here," Alex said. "There's no way anyone can track us to this hotel. We paid cash, we checked in with an alias…right now I think we all need to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we figure out the next step."

Alex and I went next door to our room. I knew Carolyn needed time alone with Mike, and Logan was going to keep up the tough-guy act as long as we were there.

"Think he's going to be okay?" Alex asked me as she got undressed.

"He's going to hurt like hell in the morning, but he'll be alright." I was only half-way paying attention to our conversation. Mike had filled us in on his ordeal in the warehouse, but I had a feeling he had held back some of the details. He had tossed some meaningful looks in Alex's direction that made me pretty sure she was Masarro's main target.

"Bobby," she said quietly, bringing my attention back to the here and now. I looked up and saw that she was already under the covers.

"Yeah honey?"

"Turn your brain off. Come lay down with me and get some rest."

It was an offer I couldn't refuse. I slipped out of my clothes and climbed into bed with her, holding my arms out so that she could press herself up against me. I let out a deep breath and tried to relax. Alex traced patterns with her fingertips along my chest and it helped ease some of my tension.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered. "This is never going to end."

"We'll think of something," I assured her, although I didn't feel very confident. She was right. Once a person was on a mafia hit list, it was pretty much over unless they went into witness protection. And sometimes, even then.

"I was so scared for Mike," she admitted.

"Me, too. He's in this mess because of us."

"There's no blame, Bobby. We didn't look for this, and neither did he." I moved my hand up to caress her back and hummed my agreement. I tossed out blame assignment with much less conviction these days.

Alex was quiet for a few minutes and if not for her continued stroking on my skin I would've thought she'd gone to sleep. She must have something on her mind. Sure enough, after another minute, she spoke.

"Bobby, how come you never ask me about Joe?" I tensed again at the mention of her former husband's name. It wasn't for any reason other than that I felt inadequate compared to him. He had been _the one_ for her, the one special enough to marry. I was what she settled for.

"It's not my business," I replied carefully. She eased herself from my embrace and rolled onto her stomach, putting her elbows on the mattress and propping her chin up on her hands.

"I'm your business," she told me gently. "So every part of my life is your business, even parts that came before you."

"Oh. Um…okay." Questions flew threw my mind like particles in an asteroid field, but nothing immediately sprang to the forefront.

"It's not him, you know," she said in a low, sexy tone. I don't think she meant for it to come across as sexy, but damn…I had trouble focusing on her words.

"What's not him?"

"The love of my life. It's not him. It's you." _Oh._ My heart was slamming hard in my chest as the emotion hit me.

"Alex, you don't have to say that," I told her. I ran my hand along the side of her face and held it there, cradling her cheek. She leaned into my palm and closed her eyes for a moment before looking at me again. When she did, I was surprised to see her whiskey-colored eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

"I would never say it if I didn't mean it," she said, and when she blinked, a tear escaped and slid down her cheek. "I mean it, with all of my heart. You are the only one for me."

I reached for her and pulled her onto my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around her. I knew she had more to say, so I held her close and waited.

"As time passes after someone dies," she began, "people tend to forget about their bad qualities. It's like, they feel guilty if they remember that person's faults, so instead they build them up in their minds until it seems that person was perfect. I think I did that for awhile, remembered Joe as perfect. But the more I'm around you, the more I remember the real Joe. And he was not perfect."

"No one is, Alex. You know that."

"I do know that. It's just that…remember how mad I got when I heard Frankie bragging about cheating on Mariella?" _Of course I remembered that_. I had wanted to ask her about it a dozen times since then. And then I knew where this was going.

"Joe?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "We'd only been married for a couple of months."

"You caught him?"

"Hey, I'm a detective, right?" she laughed, although I knew it had to be a painful memory. "I just couldn't understand why he would do something like that. I decided that there must be something wrong with me."

"Oh, honey, you know that's not true."

"I think I do now. I didn't then. I was young and my job was so important to me and I thought that maybe I just didn't know how to be a good wife."

"But you stayed with him."

"I did. And then he did it again, about six months later. By that point, I decided I must not be satisfying him…sexually. So I let him get away with it." I sighed and tipped her face towards mine so that I could wipe the tears from her cheeks.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that, sweetheart."

"I just wanted you to know. I didn't want you to think that you came second to him or that I was ever comparing you to Joe. There is no comparison, because you win, hands down, in every way." She reached up and kissed me softly.

"Well, now I understand why you hate cheaters so much," I said, grasping for a little levity so that she could gather her composure. I know how much she hated to let her emotions get the best of her.

"That's right. And I'm not so nice any more, Bobby Goren. You cheat on me and you're going to be losing some valuable equipment," she teased.

"I would never," I began, but she interrupted.

"I know you wouldn't," she said reverently. "It's just not in you, is it? You're much too honest. I think that's one of the things I love most about you. You're honest. And you're intelligent. And funny. And oh so sexy."

"What, that's all?" I joked. "What about my good looks? My stamina in bed?"

Alex laughed out loud and I treasured the sound.

Italians and Irish be damned. I could just stay in this room forever.

TBC...


	5. Chapter 5

**Alex POV**

* * *

I tossed and turned most of the night. I had no doubt that Logan had been holding out on me. Masarro had threatened to do something to me that he didn't want to share. And I was okay with that. I really didn't need to know the details of how a mobster planned my demise. Mike would tell me if it was something that affected our course of action. But that didn't keep me from speculating.

I finally drifted off around three and I could tell by Bobby's breathing that he wasn't far behind.

However, rest was short-lived. We awoke with the sun. Neither of us wanted to leave the cocoon of safety we had created, but we were both realists. It had to be done. But not before another round of life-changing, earth-shattering, toe-curling sex. I think Bobby wanted to make sure that I knew how much he desired me sexually after my admission to him last night. I knew. He made me feel like absolutely the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world. He did everything in life with an intensity and a purpose, a whole-hearted dedication to be the best. He was no different in the bedroom. Or the living room. Or wherever we happened to be.

We forced ourselves from the bed at seven-thirty. Logan was going to take us back to the warehouse where he'd been held. We didn't expect to find anyone there, but we did want to go through it for evidence.

I also wanted to call Ross this morning. We had texted him last night to let him know that Logan was safe, but we needed some more investigative work from him. Logan had mentioned that Masarro had been driving a Bentley and he had the plate number. It wasn't Masarro's car because he didn't have any cars registered in his name, so I wanted to get Ross started looking into that. I was going to give him the numbers from the two cell phones that Logan had stolen, too. They were likely throw-aways, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

Logan had also told us that the dead mobster in my apartment was killed because he had been unable to find Bobby. I thanked God for inept gangsters. I was going to ask Liz for a recommendation on getting that smell out of my place and then put it on the market. It had been a tremendous step for Bobby to bring that up and I wasn't going to let the moment pass. I would get a P.O. Box and give that as my new address for the department. Between that and cell phones, no one would ever need to know where I actually lived.

By eight we were both showered and dressed and standing outside of Logan and Barek's door. Mike pulled the door open and I couldn't hold back my shock.

"Oh my God, Mike, you look like shit!" I exclaimed as we entered his room. He closed and locked the door behind us.

"Thanks for pointing that out, Eames."

"Did you take anything?" I asked, amazed by the spread of purple and blue bruising across the side of his face. His eye was swollen and both of his hands and wrists were bruised and cut.

"Yeah, a handful of ibuprofen. And Carolyn put some kind of secret recipe cream shit on my hands."

"Admit it. It helped," Carolyn piped in.

"Yeah, it did," he said with a grin. "You guys sleep?"

"Great," I lied. "You?"

"Like a baby," he told us. He lied just as well as I did. "We going to the warehouse?"

"You remember where it's at, right?" Bobby asked.

"Oh yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if we find DeMarco and Russo in there. Masarro probably killed them after he found out I escaped. And I worked them over pretty good, so they wouldn't have put up much of a fight."

"So Carolyn brought you up to speed on what we found out?" I asked since he now knew the names of his kidnappers.

"Uh huh. Maroon Chevy. I knew that one. Dino was the guy who roughed me up while Masarro was quizzing me. He's the old man's muscle."

"If we can get him to flip, we might be able to take out Masarro," I suggested. I had a feeling Dino wouldn't be happy to hear who had killed his cousin.

"But what are we going to do? Send him back to jail?" Carolyn asked. She was getting fired up. "Because he's just going to escape again, or arrange a hit from prison, and then we're all going to be right back here in another month."

She had said what we were all thinking. We couldn't kill the guy. Not unless it worked out that it was truly self-defense. We were cops – we arrested the bad guys and let the justice system work. But as long as Masarro was alive, we were going to be targets.

* * *

An hour later, we combed the warehouse. Logan had been right. DeMarco and Russo each had two taps to the back of the head. Mike said they were still laying where he had left them, so apparently Masarro had come in, discovered Logan missing, and just killed them right then and there.

"He's going off the deep end," Bobby muttered. He was right. Masarro was killing off henchmen right and left.

"We gonna call these in?" Logan asked.

"I'm not ready to spend hours in a Boston police station, are you?" Carolyn asked.

"I'm getting pretty tired of finding dead bodies," I said with irritation. "I like it better when someone else finds it and then calls us to figure out who did it."

Bobby nodded his head in agreement, but didn't respond. We tabled the discussion for the moment and split up to look around the room.

There was no other evidence to be found in the building. Scratch that. There was no other _useful _evidence to be found. There was junk from one end of the room to the other: drug paraphernalia, trash, excrement…the place had clearly been used extensively by squatters. Masarro must have kicked them out to have the building for himself.

I found the bloody piece of glass that Mike had used to cut through his ropes. I cringed inwardly at the thought of how painful that must have been.

"They're not going to come back here," Bobby said.

"I don't know why they're not here now," Logan countered. "They wanted to catch us all in one place. Here we are. It actually would've been a smart plan."

"One we should've thought of before now," Carolyn added, clearly disgusted with herself for not having considered that.

"Yeah, but they think we're scared," Bobby suggested. "I bet they think we're already back in New York."

"So should we? Go back?" I asked. I couldn't decide. If Masarro had gone back, then we needed to go get him. But if he was still here hoping to catch us using his network of mobsters, then we needed to stay.

"Check in with Ross," Bobby told me. "See if either of those cells trace back to anything locally. Or the Bentley. If we can get a lead on something here in Boston then we need to track that down first. If we come up empty, then I guess we go home."

I pulled out my phone, but it rang before I could make a call. Ross. _That was good timing_.

"Yes, Captain," I answered.

"Eames, I'm at Dino Visucci's place right now."

"Anything?"

"No one was home, but he was definitely watching you. There are photos…" My sharp intake of breath interrupted him. _For the love of God, couldn't a woman have a sex life without everyone wanting to take pictures_?

"Relax, Eames," he continued. "There are a couple of you by yourself, entering your building, and then a few more of you and Bobby leaving the building and getting into a department SUV. They were likely taken on the same day because you're wearing the same clothes. These are the only photos, so he must have lost you guys in traffic, or he didn't follow. He may have expected you to come back."

He left that hanging, waiting for my answer.

"That would've been on a Sunday. That's the only day I go home. I've been staying with a friend. That's why that body sat in my foyer from Wednesday to Sunday," I clarified.

"Liz had that removed yesterday, by the way." _Thank God for small favors_. "I went over there with her and we bagged the newspaper article, but it was clean."

"Okay, so we know he was watching. That's how they knew where to dump the body. What else? Anything on the Bentley or the cells?"

"The Bentley had stolen plates. The number you gave me belongs on a 1986 Ford Escort belonging to Kendra McDaniels in South Boston. And before you ask, yes, I checked. She filed a report with the police."

"Do you have any good news at all?" I asked in annoyance. I was sick of dead ends.

"I was saving the best for last. Both cells were purchased by Johnny Russo."

"That doesn't help me much when I'm standing here looking at his dead body."

"Settle down, Eames, I'm not done. Wait, did you say dead body?" If I could reach through the phone and strangle the life out of Ross, I would. _Give me the freakin' news already. _I counted to ten quietly in my head. He must have picked up on the psychic death threats I was sending him, because he finally continued.

"I dumped the call logs. There were multiple calls to the same number there in Boston around the time that Logan was abducted. I've got an address."

I hung up with Ross, anxious to share my good news, but I turned to find Bobby and Carolyn staring intently at the two dead bodies. Logan was walking away from them, looking to the ceiling. Something more was going on.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The gun's still here. It's been wiped clean."

"The murder weapon for these two?" I asked, squatting down to take a closer look. The gunshot wounds looked like .22's and between the two bodies was a scarred up Raven .22. I bent even further and noticed that there was no serial number on the weapon.

"This is bullshit," Mike said from across the room.

"No one is going to believe you did this," Carolyn assured him.

"They kidnapped me. I beat them up. My blood is on their bodies. And the gun has no prints."

I ignored the discussion going on around me and proceeded to search the pockets of the dead men.

"Right," Bobby said. "Why would you leave so much evidence everywhere and then wipe down the gun?"

"I've took their guns," he shouted back, holding his jacket out to reveal the two handguns. "And now my prints are all over these!"

"Hang on, Mike. Bobby's right," Carolyn said. "Masarro isn't trying to set you up for this. He didn't expect us to come back, right? Otherwise we'd all be dead right now. He's setting up someone else."

"Who?"

"Irish mob," I said, standing up and holding out my hand. Four bullets.

I looked around and realized all eyes were on me.

"In the early eighties, a guy named Roger Wheeler took on the Irish mob. They had him assassinated and they left behind four live rounds as a calling card."

"Tulsa, right?" Bobby asked.

"Right, but the killer was tracked back to Boston."

"So nothing too obvious, nothing too obscure," Bobby said appreciatively.

"Obscure enough. I've never heard of it." Logan replied.

"Boston PD would have heard of it," Carolyn answered. I nodded.

"More importantly, the word would get around on the street. Italian mafia killed by the Irish mob. It'll start a whole turf war."

"Why would he want to do that?"

"I don't know, but here we are - smack in the middle of it."

TBC...


	6. Chapter 6

**Bobby POV**

* * *

I needed another vacation. A real one, this time. One that from beginning to end was completely stress-free. I wasn't sure Alex and I would find that anywhere unless we went to some deserted island. Hmm…._deserted island_...I would have to look into that when we cleared up this little mess we were currently in.

_Little mess_, I thought sarcastically. This was colossal and growing exponentially every hour. I had cornered Logan in the warehouse and asked him to tell me what Masarro's plans were for Alex. He didn't want to tell me, but I convinced him that my imagination was probably worse that the real thing. I was wrong.

And now I was feeling a fear like I had never before felt in my life. There was no way I was going to let Masarro take Alex from me. If I had to kill him and serve time for it, I would. And I was pretty sure Carolyn was right there with me on that aspect. I guess she loved Mike about as much as I love Alex.

After Alex discovered the bullets in the dead mafiosos' pockets, we discussed a course of action. Carolyn wanted to call a friend at the Bureau to report the murder, but Logan's suspicions about a mole in the FBI were a legitimate concern. Once again, we weren't sure who to trust.

And then, much to everyone's surprise, I suggested we call Ross. He was acting like a friend this time, and I wasn't going to be the one to ruin that. I also knew that we were skirting the law quite a bit, and I wanted to play it as much above-board as possible.

So, the four of us sketched out a plan, and then I placed the call to Ross. He was leery at first, but after we went over possible alternatives, he finally agreed.

So, we took care of business.

Logan put the thugs' guns back in their pockets, wiped clean of course. I understood why he took them to begin with, but it wouldn't be good for him to keep carrying around the weapons of murdered men. Not to mention, they had probably been used in the commission of a felony or two.

Alex wiped the bullets down and put them back in the .22 to obliterate evidence of an ambiguous Irish message.

And finally, we wiped down the cell that Logan hadn't used to call Barek. Then he put it in DeMarco's hand. We punched in 9-1-1 and left. It might take them awhile, but the battery had a full charge and eventually they would be able to trace the call and find the bodies. They would ultimately figure out that the call had been made post-mortem, but it still wouldn't lead back to us.

I felt a little like a criminal, going through so much trouble to remain undetected, but we were in a life or death situation. I wasn't going to feel bad about doing everything in my power to keep Alex safe.

We left the warehouse and went back to the car.

"So what is Masarro doing?" Carolyn asked once we were on the road heading out of South Boston. I turned in my seat so that I could look at her and Logan. Mike had his arm around her and she was resting her head on his shoulder. But she wasn't relaxing. Her eyes shone bright with fierce determination, and she looked ready to kill. _Oh yeah, she loves him_.

"Well, something big was going on that night at Floyd Bennett Field, remember?"' Alex brought up. "It was more than a drug deal. I think Masarro was planning a takeover."

"How does that play in with this?" Logan asked.

"Maybe he's looking to expand."

"Or regroup. He's lost a lot of men lately. And he lost his heir-apparent," I said.

"So he wants to join up with the Irish?" Logan said dubiously.

"More like he wants to take over their racket. They're well-established here. Maybe he wants to strong-arm them. If he can get the edge on Shane O'Connor then he can just sit back and let them do all the work while he collects his money."

Shane O'Connor was the head of the Irish family in Boston. They were big into gambling and protection rackets. They did a little with drugs and guns, but not a lot. They did have a healthy respect for cops, probably considering a lot of their sons grew up and joined the police.

"So you think Masarro's going to take on O'Connor?" Carolyn asked. "That's pretty ambitious. And on his turf, too."

"He must have something," Alex said thoughtfully. "Masarro must know something about O'Connor. Hey, who was he with at Rikers?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "But it shouldn't be too hard to find out. You think he spent time with some disillusioned Westie?" The Westies were New York's faction of the Irish mob. They worked out of Hell's Kitchen.

"It's not a bad thought," Mike said.

"Maybe Masarro promised a high-up position in exchange for dirt," Alex suggested.

"He was only in Rikers a week," Carolyn argued. "He couldn't have cozied up that fast."

Carolyn was right and I was getting frustrated. Was Masarro even still in his right mind? How were we supposed to make sense out of the evidence if there _was_ no sense to be made?

No one had any more ideas at the moment, so I made my second call of the day to Ross.

"What can I do for you, Detective?" he answered. His voice still sounded condescending, but I was starting to think that was just him. Maybe I was taking it too personal. _Although would it kill him to use my name?_

"Can you find out who Masarro's cellies were at Rikers?"

"Why? What are you thinking?"

"He's trying to get the upper hand on O'Connor for some reason. We think he wants to take over the Irish business here."

"An Italian working over the Irish in Boston? That's ambitious."

"Yes, sir. Can you find out?"

"Of course. Did you guys get the warehouse taken care of?"

"Yes. If you know anyone in the Boston PD, it wouldn't hurt to know what they know."

"You mean like if there's a warrant out for your arrests?"

"Something like that."

"I'll see what I can find out. And I'll get you the names and files you asked for. Anything else?"

"I don't think so. Not right now. We're getting ready to check out that address you gave us."

"How's everybody holding up?" His question took me by surprise. He seemed truly interested. _This was just getting strange_.

"Fine, Captain. We're all fine."

No, we weren't fine. I was holding myself together with scotch tape and paper clips. We were in a strange city trying to track a crazy man who wanted to carve Alex up into little pieces. Mike was a walking billboard for emergency medical treatment, and Carolyn was going to blow away the first guy she found with an Italian-sounding name. We were so very not fine.

But we were alive and we were determined. That had to count for something.

* * *

The address Ross gave us was for an Irish pub in the North End called Darcy's. As we approached the establishment, Logan visibly slowed his pace.

"I'm not sure I'm getting a good feeling about this," he said quietly. I could appreciate that. It was one of those dark little hole-in-the-wall places.

"Are we walking into the lion's den here?" he asked.

"They're not going to go away until we make them go away," Carolyn said. Her unwavering toughness reminded me a lot of Alex and I felt a wave of affection for her.

"Okay," Logan agreed. "Let's do this."

We were all four armed, which for Logan and Barek was against the law. Despite being licensed in New York, Massachusetts did not have reciprocity. But I didn't blame them for still wanting to carry. In fact, I was the one who gave them the guns, so I would probably get into trouble if they did, but that was fine. Again, life and death here.

We walked into the pub and looked around. There were empty booths along the side wall and tables out in the middle of the floor. Two patrons sat at the bar with pints in front of them and racing slips in their hands. The bartender regarded us cautiously.

"You four must be lost," he said finally.

"We're looking for a guy," I said.

"You cops?" the bartender asked aggressively.

"No, do we look like cops?" Logan fired back.

"Yeah, you look like fuckin' cops to me."

"We're cops," Alex admitted, stepping boldy up to the bar. "But not Boston. We're NYPD. We're looking for Vincenzo Masarro. Have you seen him?" It was a ballsy move, especially considering this place looked mobbed-up, but I guess Alex figured if we hadn't been shot by now, we were probably okay.

"You Alexandra Eames?" the bartender asked. _What the fuck?_ My heart nearly stopped beating and I quickly stepped around her to put myself between her and the bartender.

"Who's asking?" I questioned roughly, reaching across to grab a fistful of the man's shirt. _Probably not my smartest move_. Both men at the bar pulled out guns, as did Logan, Barek, and Alex. The bartender and I just glared at each other.

"Relax, Jimmy," a voice said from the back. I didn't want to look, but I had to. I saw a man coming down the stairs. He had probably been watching this exchange from his office. He spoke again when he reached the bar.

"Let my man go, Detective Goren. You can all put your guns away."

_Mother of God, Logan was right. _

We'd stepped right into the lion's den.

TBC...


	7. Chapter 7

**Logan POV**

* * *

I didn't want to put my gun away, but I also didn't want to have a shootout right here in the pub. And one of the guys at the bar was pointing his piece at Carolyn. I put my gun down and the others followed suit.

"There. Much better," the man said. "If you four will follow me, we can talk in my office."

I looked at Goren for confirmation that this was a good idea. He shrugged, clearly baffled as much as I was by this latest turn of events.

"Let's hear him out, Mike," Carolyn said quietly, putting a hand on my back. "If he wanted to kill us, we'd be dead already."

She had a point. We followed him up the stairs and into a large office. Our host waved his hand at the chairs that were placed around the room.

"Please, have a seat." We kept standing. This guy wanted to act like everything was fine, but I still wasn't about to relax.

"So you're the infamous Alexandra Eames," he said, turning to Alex. She tensed and nodded, and Goren moved a little closer to her, but before she could say anything, he rounded on me.

"And you're Mike Logan, right?"

"Yeah…" I answered hesitantly. It hit me that he had used Eames' formal name but not mine. The man broke into a grin.

"He told me the name Logan, but I didn't make the connection until I saw your face. I'm Ryan Mullins. My old man is Patrick Mullins."

"The Westie?" Mullins started nodding enthusiastically and for the first time since we'd entered the pub, the knot in my stomach started to loosen.

"He told me about you," he continued. "I've seen pictures. He said you were a rare breed."

"What does that mean?"

"You're an honest cop," he said with a laugh. "He said you saved his life a time or two. And you're lucky I recognized you or you'd all be dead right now. You've gotten yourself in a bit of trouble, have you?"

"Looks like," I answered wryly. I remembered his old man. And I _had_ helped him out of a jam he'd gotten into years ago. And before that, we'd grown up together in the neighborhood. I couldn't believe the dumb luck.

"So what's this whole thing about? Masarro's got every Irishman in Boston looking for you guys. And it's a huge price he's got on your heads. I don't think he'd go through so much trouble for just anybody."

I finally sat down and so the others did, too. From the looks on their faces, they were in just as much shock as I was, but we all recovered nicely and managed to recount the events that had led us to Boston.

"And you know he killed a couple of guards in New York, right? He's a fugitive, a cop-killer, and I don't think that's O'Connor's style," I said, hoping to appeal to their sense of fairness. Mullins didn't react.

"Masarro's saying that Alexandra here shot his niece in the back. He's got everyone fired up about it, thinking a cop did such a cowardly thing. I'm guessing that's a lie?"

"Damn straight," Eames told him. "And I've got the scar to prove it. She shot at me, and I fired back."

"And so did I," Goren said, again moving impossibly closer to Eames. "I'm the one who killed her."

Mullins waved off Goren's statement.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "Masarro has the story in his head how he wants to see it. And he's passed that on to O'Connor."

"Masarro has something else planned here," Carolyn spoke up. "This isn't just about avenging a death. He's trying to muscle his way into Boston."

She filled him in on the warehouse murders, and the live-round calling card.

"Now that's something my boss will be interested in hearing. He's going along with this hit because Masarro painted you three as dirty."

"Hey, I'm in this just as much as they are," Carolyn interrupted. "And none of us are dirty." I shook my head at her indignation. Leave it to my Carolyn to insist on being included on a hit list.

"I'm just repeating what Masarro told us. You're not on the list, darlin'," he told her with an apologetic grin. "But if this is all a cover for an attempted takeover, then me and my brothers have got bigger problems. I need to call O'Connor and set up a meeting."

Without further discussion, Mullins picked up his phone and made the call. He spoke in a hushed tone for a minute and then hung up.

"Tomorrow morning at nine. Back here. O'Connor will meet with you and hear what you have to say."

"How do we know it's not a set-up?" Eames asked.

"Like I said, darlin'. If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead."

* * *

My mind was reeling. We'd come so close to death so many times in the past twenty-four hours. If I was a cat, I'd be on about life number seven right now. We track a number to a bar where the owner is under orders to kill us if he sees us and yet it turned out to be the son of an old friend. What are the odds?

We decided to go back to the hotel. It was still early, but the stress of our situation had wiped us all out.

"Let's rest for a bit," Eames said when we approached our rooms. She looked at her watch. "It's four o'clock now. Let's meet up at seven. We can get some dinner and talk about tomorrow."

I opened our room door for Carolyn and then locked it up behind us. I was still pretty sure our hotel was safe, but that didn't mean I was going to leave the deadbolt undone.

"How's your face?" she asked me when I turned around. She stepped up close to me and delicately touched my cheek.

"Hurts like a sonofabitch."

"I can get you some ice from the machine," she offered.

"I just want to get some rest," I sighed. I ached in places I didn't know existed.

"Okay. Come on, let's get in the bed." I let her lead me over to the bed and then I stood still while she unbuttoned my shirt. She took it off and then rubbed her hands softly over the discolored skin that covered my midsection. Her touch was a welcome change from the pain I'd been feeling all day.

She unfastened my jeans and pulled them down my legs so that I could step out of them and then she coaxed me onto the bed. I laid back and watched while she got down to her underwear before climbing in next to me. I held out my arm to her, but she shook her head.

"Let me hold you," she said. _Ah, what a woman_. She raised her arm and I eased my head down onto her chest. Then she began running her fingers through my hair.

"I want to kill that man, Mike," she told me in a quiet voice that was in stark contrast to her words.

"Masarro?" I asked unnecessarily.

"Yeah. I can't help it. I don't think I've ever felt so strongly about something before. Ever since I realized he had taken you yesterday, it's all I can think about. When I find him, I'm going to kill him."

"You can't do that, sweetheart. If we find him, we have to take him in." I knew I was saying the right words, but on the inside, I agreed with her. I wanted him dead, too. Not just for what he had done to me, but for what he wanted to do to Eames.

Carolyn didn't argue with me, but I knew what she was thinking. She's a strong-willed woman, and I wasn't going to change her mind. Her feelings were what they were. And when it came down to crunch time, I would just do whatever was in my power to protect her.

My body relaxed slowly as she continued her ministrations and I felt myself starting to drift. But then I had a thought. Actually it was a thought that had been dancing around my head for months now, but this time it hit me so strong that I had to say the words out loud.

"Hey," I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"You know, I'd never had a woman partner until Deakins put me together with you," I said, suddenly changing direction.

"I know. You told me."

"I was never very good with women. I mean, I was _good_ with women, but…"

"I know what you mean, Mike," she chuckled.

"Did I ever tell you how much I resented you at first? I mean, here you were, this drop-dead gorgeous woman and you were so damn smart it was scary. You could read me like a book and I didn't know what to think about that. I mean _me_…I was the mutt of the department. I always wondered who you'd pissed off to get stuck with me."

"I asked for you."

"What?"

"When Deakins brought me in, he gave me a few choices for a partner. And he talked you up, told me you had great instincts. I didn't get stuck with you, Mike. I picked you."

"How come you never told me that before?"

"You never asked," she replied easily. "What makes you ask now?"

And now I was back to it. That question.

"Do you want to get married?" Her hand froze and I stopped breathing. I couldn't see her face from my treasured position, nestled against her chest.

"What?" she said finally. I couldn't wait any longer. I pushed up from her so that I could look into her eyes.

"Do you want to get married?" It wasn't the most suave proposal, but it was sincere. Her eyes glistened and she slowly shook her head.

"Do you?"

"I'm asking, aren't I?"

"Oh, Mike. I love you, love you so very much. But I don't want to get married."

"You don't?" I felt like I was going to be sick. _Isn't this what was supposed to come next?_

"No, but I will if you want to."

"That's not a reason to get married."

"Mike," she said. And then she waited for me to meet her eyes again. "I've just never had any desire to get married. But that doesn't mean I don't plan to spend every day for the rest of my life with you. A piece of paper or a ceremony is not going to make me more committed than I already am."

"But if you want it," she continued. "If you want that symbolism of forever, then we'll do it. But don't ask me because you think I need the validation. I already have everything I want. I have you."

I reached for her and ignored the pain as I brought her tightly into my arms.

"I just want to make you happy," I whispered.

"You do." She pulled back and kissed me fiercely, throwing all of her passion into it and before long, we disposed of our remaining clothes. I had to let her do most of the work, but she didn't seem to mind.

Afterwards, sweaty and breathless, she laid across my chest.

"I can't believe you asked me to marry you. You are just the sweetest guy ever."

"I can't believe you said no," I laughed. "I thought women liked that kind of thing?"

"Oh, Mike. You know I'm not most women."

"No, you are definitely not. You are one of a kind."

We slept for a couple of hours and then cleaned up and went to Goren and Eames' room.

"I called Ross again," Goren told us.

"Three times in one day. That has got to be a record," I quipped.

"Yeah, well, he needed to know about this meeting tomorrow. And we needed to know what information he uncovered." Goren was clearly not in a playful mood. He had practically worn a path in the carpet.

"And?"

"Antonio Gallo just happened to be in Rikers. He was in there on some kind of trumped up racketeering charges. Or at least that's his story. He was awaiting trial."

"Was?" Goren nodded. Gallo was the Don of the second largest crime family in New York.

"Masarro hooked up with him?" Carolyn asked in surprise.

"It looks like they were cellies," Alex said.

"And?" I waited for the knockout punch that I knew was coming.

"Gallo was on the transport bus. He broke out with Masarro. So now Gallo owes him a debt."

"And we're just hearing about this now?" I asked loudly. Eames nodded her agreement.

"He's going to help him muscle out O'Connor. It'll be a win-win for him. Masarro moves out of the New York racket and takes over Boston."

"Right," Goren said. His pace around the room kept increasing until finally Eames stood up and blocked his path. She put both hands on his chest and whispered something to him. I don't know what she said, but he calmed immediately.

"Masarro's plan is to trick O'Connor into taking us out, and then leave O'Connor holding the bag. If he goes down for the murder of cops, it'll leave his territory vulnerable and then Masarro will swoop in." Eames said all this matter-of-factly as though it didn't change the dynamic, didn't mean we were in even more danger than we thought. If that was even possible. She was a cool cat, that Eames.

"So this meeting tomorrow…" I began and then trailed off. Now there were going to be _two_ mafia Dons telling O'Connor a story, and all we had on our side was the truth and the son of a childhood friend.

"It's going to be a tougher sell than we thought."

TBC...


	8. Chapter 8

**Alex POV**

* * *

The four of us powwowed long into the night. We called out for pizza and when the delivery guy showed up and we saw he was a college student, Logan offered him an extra fifty if he brought us back some beer.

There was no real plan except to lay all of our cards on the table. O'Connor would either believe us or he wouldn't. Considering the fact that he had agreed to the meeting at all, he was at least interested in hearing our story. Otherwise he would have ordered Mullins to take us out right then.

This knowledge did not help me sleep. I changed positions a dozens times before giving up and wandering around the hotel room. Of course, Bobby was already up. He stood at the window and watched the Boston skyline.

Our combined fear was like a third person in the room. We desperately needed to relax.

"Carolyn told me that Mike asked her to marry him," I said as I grabbed him from behind. I flattened myself against his broad back and breathed in his scent. Just that simple act brought my escalating nerves some respite.

"I knew that was coming."

"You did?"

I was completely thrown off by that. Bobby was a genius in all manner of things, but personal relationships were the one remaining mystery to him and although he had progressed in leaps and bounds as far as we were concerned, the idea that he was able to see the signs in our friends was a surprise.

"Well, yeah. All of the evidence pointed in that direction…"

"And?"

"And he told me a few weeks ago that he'd been thinking about it." I snorted indelicately against his back, and I could feel his answering chuckle rumble through him.

"So when's the big day?" he asked.

"She said no."

"What? She said no? When?" He turned then and leaned back against the window, pulling me with him against his chest. "He didn't look devastated when they were in here earlier."

"It wasn't that kind of no," I clarified. "They're still together. Carolyn said she doesn't need a piece of paper to prove how much she loves him."

"Hmm…"

"I know. And I don't think he does either. I think he was asking because he wanted to show his commitment."

"What about you?"

"We can't get married," I said quickly without much thought. "We're struggling enough to keep our relationship from the department's eyes. We can't make anything legal."

"That's not what I asked.

"Do I need a gesture from you that shows your commitment?" I asked for clarification.

"Yeah. I won't let our jobs stand in the way. Do you _want_ to get married?"

His words struck me dumb. It's not that I thought it was an actual proposal, but still…it was definitely a sign that it was on the table for him. In all of the time I'd known him, and especially over the past six weeks that we'd been a couple, I never once, not ever, imagined those words coming from his lips.

"I…um…I…Bobby…"

"Now you sound like me, Alex," he teased. "Spit it out."

"Um…no. I don't want to get married and I don't need anything more from you to prove your commitment. Bobby, you've risked your job for me. You stepped between me and an Irish mobster. You jumped into Jamaica Bay to rescue me. How could I possibly doubt your devotion to me?"

"Well, when you put it like that…" he grinned.

"Not to mention that you asked me to move in with you," I reminded him.

"Have you thought more about that?"

"I'm ready if you are. This would be a great time to sell my place," I said sardonically.

"So…after we finish taking on the Italian mafia, then…"

"Then we'll start officially living together. Well, secretly of course," I added with a grin. "And that's the last step we need to take as far as I'm concerned."

"And if you change your mind about marriage?"

"You'll be the first to know. Same goes for you."

Happy with the results of our discussion, and ecstatic with Bobby's new-found ability to talk about issues, I found myself much more relaxed.

"I should've kept those bullets from the warehouse," I said suddenly. My reduced stress was allowing for better brain function.

"Why? To show O'Connor? We could use any .22's for that. He would have no way of knowing if they were from the crime scene."

"That's true. I just wish we had more evidence to back up our version. I think if O'Connor believes the truth, then he'll help us. The Irish mob doesn't care much for taking out cops. In fact, most mafia men try to avoid that altogether."

"Except when the cop has messed with one of the family."

"Right."

It was a toss-up. Tomorrow would either throw things heavily in our favor, or we were going to have to use all of our cunning to get out of that pub alive.

* * *

At eight o'clock the next morning, we met Logan and Barek in the hall. They looked as nervous as I felt.

"I don't know why I bothered with the gun," Logan said as we headed for the lobby. "You know they're going to pat us down."

"They didn't last time. Mullins knew we had guns and yet he didn't take them."

"Which means they're confident in the fact that we're outgunned. I wonder how many more mobsters were hanging out upstairs," Bobby said. He was right. Mullins considered Logan a friend, but he still would have never allowed us to stay armed if he weren't sure he could take us.

"Somehow I think O'Connor won't take any chances."

And Mike was right. We arrived at Darcy's a little after eight-thirty. The pub was closed for business, but Ryan Mullins met us at the door. He locked up behind us and then asked for our guns. We all hesitated.

"There's no need for weapons here," said a voice from out of the shadows. Reluctantly, we turned over our guns. As was the case earlier, we were taking a chance just by being here. If O'Connor was going to turn on us, the only good it would do us to have guns was that we would take some of them down with us. Either way, we'd be dead.

We walked toward the table at the back end of the bar. Shane O'Connor sat casually in a chair with two associates standing behind him. O'Connor looked to be in his late fifties, but the years had been kind to him. He was quite attractive, and as we approached, he gave us a friendly smile.

"There won't be any killing going on today, you have my word," he assured us. "I agreed to be on the lookout for you as a favor to a fellow businessman, but truth be told, Masarro has been a thorn in my New York brethren's side for many years. I'm willing to listen to what you have to say."

We sat at the table with O'Connor and he shooed off his men with the exception of Mullins. He listened quietly while the four of us told him about the goings-on in Richmond that had ultimately led to our current situation.

"And I'm going to take your word that you didn't kill that girl in cold blood," he said to me when we had finished. "Why should I believe you over Masarro?"

"Maybe because Masarro has gone a little crazy?" Mike suggested sarcastically.

"Mike," Carolyn warned. And then she started to reach for her bag, but she stopped. "I'm just going to pull some documents out of my bag," she told him so as not to alarm anyone. O'Connor nodded. I was curious to see what she had, too. And when I saw, I could've grabbed her up and kissed her.

"This is the autopsy report from Mariella De Luca," she began, showing O'Connor the diagram of the gunshot wounds. "Clearly she was not shot from behind. And this," she added as she laid another piece of paper on the table. "This is the hospital report from Detective Eames' visit to the emergency room after being shot by Mariella."

"How did you get that?" Bobby asked quietly, echoing my sentiments.

"I called Dr Rodgers late last night. She got everything together and faxed them to the front desk for me this morning."

"Okay," O'Connor conceded. "So Masarro made up the events that led to his niece's death. I can see that it was a justifiable shooting. I will spread the word that none of my men are to harm any of you."

I let out a breath that I didn't realize I'd been holding. And then he continued.

"But, I can do you one better. I could take him out altogether."

"We're not asking you for a hit," Bobby said emphatically. "As much as I would love to see it happen, there's no way that's what we're asking you to do."

O'Connor chuckled.

"I don't mean kill him. I mean take him out of the business. I could see to it that he loses his power, his money. Without those, he loses his associates. And then he's just an old man in a cheap suit."

"What would we need to do for you?" Mike asked, ever the cynic.

"One favor. I have a brother-in-law who is out on bail right now, but he is facing charges of murder. He's innocent."

Logan barked out a laugh of disbelief and I kicked him under the table. O'Connor waved his hand.

"It's fine. I'm sure you hear that all of the time. And my brother-in-law is no saint, I'll grant you that. But this murder, he did not commit. I want you to look into it and see if you can find some evidence that will help him to be absolved."

"We can't stay in Boston as long as it might take to solve a murder. Not to mention that I don't think the BPD would appreciate us getting involved," I told him. I wanted to help, but this was getting too far out of bounds.

"Twenty-four hours," he countered. "Give me twenty-four hours of your time. I'm sure you can find a way to get access to the case file. See what you can find, give me your best effort, and I'll make Masarro wish he'd never come to Boston. When I'm done with him, he won't have anyone taking orders from him anymore. If he still wants to kill you, he'll have to do it himself."

"Why? Why would you do this?"

"Like I said, he's been trouble for years. And Ryan here told me about the bullets left at the warehouse murders yesterday. I believe that he may be trying to make us take the fall for that. It's a little ambitious of him, trying to come up here to my territory and take me down, but I can believe it."

"What about Gallo?" I asked, and then I told O'Connor about the escape and how Gallo was possibly helping Masarro.

"Gallo's no fool. He'll jump from a sinking ship rather than go down with it. When we start taking over Masarro's business, Gallo will step out of the way. And he had no personal beef with you."

"So we're safe from the Irish. We look at the evidence in your brother-in-law's case, and you'll ruin Masarro's business. And then we're even," Bobby said.

"You have my word," he said as he stood up. He held out his hand. "Do I have yours?"

We looked at each other carefully before standing up. Each of us took a turn shaking his hand. This was scary ground we were standing on, making a deal with O'Connor, but for the first time since we'd arrived in Boston, I was starting to feel like we had an out.

TBC...


	9. Chapter 9

**Bobby POV**

* * *

Shane O'Connor gave us some basic information on his brother-in-law's case and then we left the pub with the understanding that we would return again the following morning.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Alex asked me as we walked to the car.

"No, I'm not," I admitted. "But I don't see any harm in it. We'll look at the file and see if there's anything there. O'Connor just asked us to try; he didn't say we had to get him off."

"How are we going to get BPD to let us look at the case file?' Carolyn asked.

"That's the easy part," Logan said with a grin. "We call Ross and have him find a similar murder in New York, but one that's unsolved."

"Good idea," I said. "You call Ross."

"Oh no," Logan said with a wave of his hands. "I'm the _former_ detective here. _You_ can call Ross. Me and Carolyn will go talk to Michael Dugan and get his version of events."

The murder in question was a gruesome one. It involved a twenty-five year old convenience store employee who was stabbed to death. Dugan, O'Connor's wife's brother, had been found leaning over the body, covered in blood.

Fortunately for us, but in general a sad statement, it didn't take Ross long to find a similar murder from Manhattan that remained unsolved.

"Don't step in it up there," Ross warned after he gave me the details of the case. He wasn't crazy about us making the deal with O'Connor, but ultimately he understood. And OCCB would be happy about it because if O'Connor put Masarro out of business, it would likely flush him out of the woodwork. He was still, after all, a fugitive from justice.

Alex and I went to the District A-1 police station, which served North End where the murder had been committed. Much to our surprise, Ross had given them a heads-up.

"Detectives Goren, Eames," the desk sergeant said when we showed him our id's. "Your captain said you'd be coming by, but we weren't expecting you this fast. And for a two-year-old murder from New York?"

"We've been working on this for a while, and then we heard about this case up here and thought we should check it out. Maybe this Michael Dugan character was in New York two years ago when our guy was killed."

There was no way we were going to tell BPD we were looking at the file to try to free their guy. That did not foster good relationships.

"I've run a copy of the file for you, and there's a conference room available for you to work in."

"Wow, Ross must have really greased the wheels," Alex said after we were alone in the conference room. The case file documents were spread out between us.

"It feels good to be doing this again," I commented. It felt like forever since we had just sat and gone through evidence together.

"Yes it does," she agreed, giving me that smile she does that's only meant for me. I held her gaze for a moment longer and then we got to it.

We worked in silence for about an hour, each of us taking turns looking through everything.

"What's the first thing that jumps out at you about this?" she asked me after we'd had the chance to look over it all at least once.

"Why would Dugan stay around with the body until the police showed if he was the killer?"

"Right. And look at this," she said, pointing at one of the photographs. Dugan's clothes. They were bloody, but not nearly as bloody as they should be.

Alex's phone rang. It was Carolyn, so she put it on speaker.

"We're still here with Dugan, but I've stepped outside. I don't know, guys, but he seems sincere to me."

"What did he say about the timeline?"

"He says he was in the store. Another guy, in a mask, came in and demanded money. When the clerk refused, the guy stabbed him repeatedly. Then he ran, leaving the knife in the victim." I started flipping through the photos.

"And Dugan?" Alex asked.

"He says he went to help. He felt for a pulse. He couldn't find one, and he wanted to administer CPR, but the clerk still had the knife in his chest.

"So he took it out," Alex supplied.

"Right. He admits it was a bad decision. There was no security camera footage?" she asked.

"The store has cameras, but they've been broken for awhile. They keep them up as a deterrent," Alex said ironically.

"So what else do you want to know from Dugan? He's got priors, but nothing violent."

"But the cops have his bloody handprint on the knife," I added. I couldn't blame the BPD. It looked like an open and shut case. Criminal, bloody, found at the scene…

"Alex, we need to go through this again," I said suddenly. I started flipping through pages, not exactly sure what I was looking for, but knowing it was there _somewhere_.

"You've got something," Carolyn stated.

"Maybe. We'll call you back. Have Dugan run through his story one more time and then come back here and pick us up." We had let Mike and Carolyn drop us and take our car to talk to Dugan. Their car was still in the parking garage.

"Okay," she agreed quickly.

I liked Carolyn. A lot. She didn't try to push me for details when I wasn't ready to talk yet. Sometimes I needed to let things sort themselves out in my head before trying to say them out loud. Ross always wanted me to share in the process. Most people did. But not Alex, and now, I was learning, not Carolyn either. I wished we had worked together more often when she was still at MCS.

As expected, Alex stayed silent. I reread the details of the report, reread the statements from the police, and then thought about what Carolyn had learned from Dugan. Time passed. Alex went for coffee and came back. We both read the reports some more. Carolyn sent a text that said she and Mike were waiting in the coffee shop down the street. Alex texted back to tell her we'd be there when we got there.

And then it clicked.

"The only prints on the knife are Dugan's bloody ones," I said finally.

Alex stared at me and thought about my statement. It was so painfully obvious that we, like the BPD, had almost overlooked it. Alex gave me a full-on grin.

"And why would there only be bloody ones if he originally had the knife in his clean hand?"

"Exactly. The knife was clean, the killer wore gloves, Dugan got his hands bloody when he checked for a pulse, and then he touched the knife. The only prints are ones in blood."

That was it. That key piece of evidence that O'Connor was hoping for. And we didn't have to do anything about it except tell O'Connor. He could have Dugan's lawyer bring it up and it should help to ultimately clear Dugan of the crime.

And it was a huge relief to both of us that we were able to help O'Connor without doing anything illegal. Okay, so maybe we had fudged our reasons for looking at the file, but there was no real harm in that. And we were going to help an innocent man go free.

"Bloody prints? That's it?" Logan asked when we joined them in the café.

"That's right," I said. "That's it. Just bloody prints. No _not-bloody_ prints."

"So now what?" Logan asked.

"Now we can meet up with O'Connor tomorrow. We'll tell him what we found. In turn, O'Connor will force Masarro out of the New York crime business."

"He'll still have a hit on our heads."

"Yeah, but he'll have no one left to carry it out. This might actually help us catch him. He'll get desperate and make a mistake. And then we can get our hands on him and take him into custody."

Carolyn made a sound of derision.

"If I get my hands on him, custody will include a six-foot pine box..." she muttered. Logan gave her a pointed look, but she rolled her eyes at him.

"You think he'll still come after us, even when his world is crumbling around him?" Alex asked.

"It depends on whether he's truly going crazy. A sane man would walk away. If he's let his anger get the best of him, then we'll see him again."

I hated the thought, but Logan was right. But I would much prefer to take my chances with Masarro one-on-one. Just yesterday, we were still looking at us against the Italian mafia and the Irish mob, so things were definitely looking up.

We had dinner in the café and then Carolyn said she had somewhere she wanted to go. She had stepped out earlier to make a call, but I hadn't given it much thought. Now my curiosity was up.

"What did you have in mind?"

"I'll tell you when we get there," she said.

We had nothing left to do in Boston until the morning, so none of us minded a side trip. After our meeting with O'Connor, we would head back to New York and back to work.

We climbed into the car. Carolyn was being secretive, but she still let Alex drive. She supplied her with directions as needed.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at The Esplanade, a park that bordered the Charles River. I looked at Carolyn and raised my eyebrow, but she just gave me an enigmatic smile.

"What's this place?" Mike asked as we climbed out of the car.

"It's a park, Mike," Carolyn said sarcastically.

"I can see that. Why are we here?"

"I'm meeting someone here."

"Who? Who do you know in Boston?"

"Just come on," she said, grabbing his hand and tugging him toward the shoreline. I took Alex by the hand and we took our time following.

"This is a beautiful place," Alex said. I had to agree. The river was to the west and the sun was setting, providing an even more spectacular backdrop.

"What do you think the plan is?" she asked me, interlacing her fingers through mine. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the knuckles.

"I have no idea, but I'm going to enjoy every second of this."

"Do you really think this is going to be over soon?"

"I think Masarro will still try to get us. But I think without help, he'll be easy to catch." Alex nodded and squeezed my hand.

"This is nice, isn't it? When we got up here Sunday night, I never thought things would go the way they did."

"You thought Mike was going to be killed," I said quietly. Alex looked up at me.

"I don't know why it still surprises me that you know what I'm thinking."

"This one was easy," I confessed. "I was thinking the same thing."

"It's a good thing he's so resourceful." I nodded thoughtfully, remembering what Logan had told me about Masarro's plans. And how Mike had taken a beating rather than allow Masarro to get Alex's number.

"He's a good friend," I added. And then I forced the dark thoughts from my mind. Now was not the time. "When he first came to work with us, I thought maybe you were attracted to him," I admitted. My plan to lighten the mood worked. Alex laughed.

"Mike? Are you kidding? And here I thought you were truly psychic."

"Why? What did you think of him?"

"You mean when I didn't want to hit him?" she asked, still chuckling at the thought of a romance between her and Logan. I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

"I think of him as a brother. I have from day one. He annoys the hell out of me, but he's loyal and smart. He's rude and obnoxious sometimes, but strangely that's a quality that suits him. I'm glad he's found someone like Carolyn. They're good together," she concluded.

"Like us," I added.

"Like us."

Alex and I watched as a woman approached Carolyn and Mike, who were by this time a dozen or so yards in front of us. They all shook hands.

"Bobby, Alex, come on," Carolyn encouraged. "This is Abigail Masters. She's a Justice of the Peace."

TBC...


	10. Chapter 10

**Alex POV**

* * *

I didn't know what to think when Carolyn introduced us to her friend, but then I saw they way she was looking at Mike. _Oh._ I guess she changed her mind.

"You guys are going to get married?" I asked, unable to hide my shock.

"Sort of," Carolyn admitted. "Abigail is going to do the ceremony, but we don't have a license, so it's not legally binding."

"But it's emotionally binding. That's what's important, right?" the JOP added.

"Right. What do you think, Mike?" Carolyn asked. He didn't speak, but simply pulled her to him and planted the most intense and passionate kiss I have ever been witness to. I was ready to pull Bobby aside and find our own little deserted area of park.

"I'll take that as a yes," Carolyn said breathlessly when he let her go.

"Well then," Abigail said when Mike nodded enthusiastically. "Let's get started. If you two will stand here, and maybe your friends want to stand up with you."

I moved to stand next to Carolyn and Bobby stood beside Mike. It was such a romantic setting and an impulsive decision…my insides were flip-flopping with emotion.

I watched as Mike took both of Carolyn's hands in his and then he leaned in close and whispered in her ear.

"I love you so much," I heard him rumble. Then he stood back and let the ceremony begin.

I took it all in, watching how they looked at each other and listening to the words. I've heard them a hundred times before, once even at my own wedding, but somehow they took on a whole new meaning. And then I felt the heat of Bobby's stare and I looked up to catch his gaze.

Abigail had reached the vows portion of the ceremony. I held Bobby's eyes as I heard her say the words, and she asked Mike to repeat after her. He said the words.

"I, Mike, take you Carolyn…" and then my heart clenched as I realized that Bobby was mouthing the words…to me.

_I, Bobby, take you Alex_…

He silently completed the entire vow, never taking his eyes from mine. I shifted my gaze between his eyes and his mouth, taking in the movement of his lips as he promised to love, honor and cherish me as long as we both shall live. My cheeks felt warm and my heart was pounding and I just couldn't believe that I had found this wonderful, sweet, and beautiful man. All of the events in my life that led me to be Bobby's partner and eventually his lover. I would never wish for a single thing to be different, or else we might not have ended up here, right here, with me mouthing the vows right back to him.

_I, Alex take you Bobby…._

And yeah, we could've used our full names. We could've said Robert and Alexandra. But that's not who we were. We were Bobby and Alex or Goren and Eames. And now…now in the midst of this Boston nightmare we had found ourselves a part of…now we were husband and wife. In our minds at least. And wasn't that where it really mattered?

* * *

Later, after saying our goodbyes to Abigail Masters and leaving the park, we sat in the hotel bar. It was a surreal little bubble we were living in, only twelve hours away from our second meeting with the top Irish mob boss in Boston.

"Carolyn, that was incredible. What made you think to do that?" I had to ask once we all had our drinks in front of us. Mike had barely been able to take his eyes off of her since that first moment of realization in the park, but now he finally looked at me.

"I asked her last night. To marry me," he clarified. "But she said no."

"I know. She told me," I admitted with a grin. "Doesn't look like she's still saying no to me."

"I…I just…I don't know," Carolyn said in an unusual moment of ineloquence.

"I didn't want there to be any doubt," she finished finally. "I don't want there to ever be any doubt," she said again, turning Mike's face toward her so that she could look him in the eyes. "And if you want to get a license in New York and do this again, then I'm okay with it. But I don't need it. I just need you."

I felt Bobby reach for my hand under the table and I grabbed it, holding on tight.

"How did you find a Justice of the Peace willing to do that, and on such short notice?" Bobby asked, drawing the two lovebirds back into conversation.

"I made a call to an old Bureau colleague. She gave me Abigail's number. I had helped her out years ago when she found herself in the middle of an…unsavory situation."

"Well, it was very creative. I'm impressed," Bobby said. "And a little jealous I didn't think of it myself." I squeezed his hand, but he loosened his grip on me. Before I could wonder about it, I felt his fingers delicately drawing patterns along my palm and my wrist. The flip-flopping began again in earnest. _This man is going to be the death of me._

Mike and Carolyn were carrying on a conversation with Bobby, but I couldn't think about anything but his fingers on my skin. I took in a sharp breath as his caress went further up my arm, and I looked up quickly to make sure no one had noticed. Mike and Carolyn were clueless, but Bobby was barely suppressing a smirk. Oh, okay…_Two can play that game. _

I pulled my hand from Bobby's grasp and placed it firmly on his thigh. His leg tensed immediately and the ghost of a smile disappeared.

"So Dugan seemed appreciative of our help?" I asked, interjecting myself into the conversation and letting a slow grin slide across my face.

"Oh yeah. And he was a charming guy. It's hard to believe he's actually a mobster," Carolyn said.

"And that we helped him?" Mike added with a wry grin.

"Well, if he didn't kill the clerk, then it was only right to help him get off," I said, although I was only partially paying attention to the words. My hand was easing slowly and tortuously up Bobby thigh, squeezing randomly as it progressed. The firm muscles of his leg had not relaxed since my hand had taken up residence there, and I loved the powerful feeling of being able to render him speechless.

"You okay, Goren?" Logan asked when he suddenly noticed Bobby's silence.

"Yeah…um…yeah. Fine. I'm fine."

"You sure? Because you look like you're starting to sweat a little. It's not hot in here," Logan continued.

"I'm fine," Bobby insisted, taking his hand and clamping it down on mine to hold it firmly in place.

Carolyn looked back and forth between me and Bobby and smiled.

"Come on, Mike. I think we've got a wedding night to celebrate. And then tomorrow, we can get the hell out of this city." She stood from the table and we all said our goodnights.

Bobby turned to me and I couldn't keep the laugh from coming out.

"Oh, you think you're funny, do you?" he asked in a mock-threatening voice.

"You started it," I reminded him.

"I'm going to finish it, too," he said, pulling me up from the table. He threw down a twenty from his wallet, and grabbed me by the hand. He barely looked at me while we waited for the elevator, and I wasn't sure what was going through his mind. But then we got in the elevator and the doors closed on us.

He pushed me up against the wall, pinning me in with his sizeable form.

"I've warned you about teasing me," he said gruffly. His lips attacked my throat and his hands worked feverishly to find their way under my shirt.

"I…um…." I had no words. The things he was doing…if he weren't holding me up with his thigh between my legs, I would be in a puddle on the floor.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Were you saying something?"

_I have no idea_. And to think I had this crazy idea earlier about having some sort of power over him...That was just ridiculous because right now, he had me so worked up I was ready to let him do whatever he wanted to me, right there in the elevator.

And then the car came to a stop and the doors opened. He stepped away, and for a second, I wasn't sure if my legs were going to hold me up, but then Bobby slipped a firm arm around my waist and held my tightly against him.

He didn't speak as we made our way to the room. My heart was racing and I just couldn't _think_. Couldn't think about a single thing except Bobby. And what he was going to do with those hands and that mouth and his…

"Alex," he whispered as he closed our room door behind us.

"Yeah?"

"Take your clothes off," he commanded. His confident attitude was a huge turn-on and I didn't even stop to consider that I _don't_ take orders from a man. I just quickly and efficiently stripped out of my clothes and left them where they fell, just inside the door.

"You are so fucking beautiful," he rasped, approaching me again and resuming his stroking of my scorching skin. "So beautiful…"

"Bobby, please…" I begged, barely recognizing my own voice. God the _things_ that man could do. He was making me crazy.

"Please what?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"You…I just need you…please…" I murmured, pulling his shirt over his head so that I could feel that skin-on-skin contact I was so desperately seeking. He stopped touching me long enough to slip out of his jeans and then he pushed me back against the wall and without hesitation, plunged straight into me. I shouted out my approval, Bobby having cured me of my inhibitions about being vocal during sex.

And then, from somewhere, I could hear a cell phone ringing. Bobby's.

"Don't," I warned.

"Not a chance," he replied, never slowing.

And then my cell phone started ringing.

"Mother fucker," I yelled. But there was still no way I was answering that phone.

"It could be Ross," Bobby ground out, his breaths coming heavy from exertion.

"I swear to God, Bobby, if you ever say that man's name again while we're having sex…"

And then someone started pounding on the door.

"Go the _fuck_ away," I said, enunciating each word carefully.

"Eames, Goren," Logan said from the hall. I sighed heavily and rested my face against Bobby's shoulder.

"What?" Bobby yelled.

"Open up. We've got a problem. Ross was trying to call you."

"Give me a damn minute," I said crossly. I was moments away from the best damn orgasm of my life – what could be so important?

"We'll finish that," Bobby assured me with a grin as I angrily threw my clothes back on.

"With our luck, the whole damn city is burning down right about now," I said.

As it turned out, it wasn't the city. It was my apartment.

TBC...


	11. Chapter 11

**Logan** **POV**

* * *

I really hated interrupting Eames and Goren. I knew what they were up to because I could hear her all the way out in the hallway, but I didn't really have a choice. If it were my place that had just burned to the ground, I'd want to know about it.

And if I thought for one second that my news would settle Eames' temper down in the slightest, I was completely wrong. It only shifted its focus from being pissed at being interrupted during sex to being outraged at Masarro's audacity to burn down her apartment building.

And none of us had any doubt that Masarro was behind it. I mean, Eames and Goren were a little unlucky, but there was just no way that now someone else was after them.

So the old man had gone back to New York. I wondered if O'Connor knew that. Or maybe O'Connor had already started the mafia coup even though we had yet to report back to him.

We needed to set up a quick meet with O'Connor and get back to New York.

Eames sat quietly in the hotel room, literally pulsating with fury. I got on the phone to Darcy's pub.

"No one was hurt," I heard Carolyn tell Eames. There were twenty units in her building. "The fire was started in your apartment, and by the time it spread, everyone had a chance to get out."

"That's good, but that doesn't change things. When I'm done with him, he's going to wish he were back in Rikers. He would be much safer in there."

"Alex," Goren started.

"No, Bobby," she fired back and I wanted to hear her argument, but Ryan Mullins had finally picked up the phone in his noisy pub. It was almost ten o'clock at night.

"Mullins, it's me, Mike Logan."

"Logan! Have you got news for us?" he asked cheerfully.

"I do. Is there any way we can meet with O'Connor tonight? Something's come up, and we need to get back to New York."

"Let me check. Give me a minute." Mullins slammed the phone down on the bar and I tuned back into the conversation in the room.

"We can't just kill the guy, Alex. We don't do that."

"He's not going to stop. He's going to keep coming after us. Oh, God…" Eames stopped and looked at me suddenly.

"Mike, he knows where you guys live." _Shit._

"I'll call Ross and have him send a unit over there," she told me, already picking up her cell phone.

"Logan," Mullins said, coming back to the phone.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Come on now. He'll meet with you. And he said to let you know that he's already started the ball rolling in New York."

"Yeah, I figured that. I think Masarro has, too."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll explain when we get there. It'll take us twenty minutes."

We grabbed the few personal items that were in the hotel rooms because we had no intention of coming back. After we met with O'Connor, we would hit the road.

We hurried down to the parking garage and into Eames' car. She pulled out the siren and stuck it to the top of the car and drove like a maniac to within a couple of blocks of Darcy's and then she turned everything off.

Mullins met us as we came in the door. The place was lively, full of rough-looking men drinking beer, and when we walked in, everyone stopped to look at us. But once it was seen that Mullins was okay with us, everyone went back to enjoying themselves.

"He's waiting in the office," Mullins told us as we hurried up the stairs.

"What's happened?" O'Connor asked when we entered. "Did Masarro do something already?"

"He burned down my apartment," Eames said sharply, clearly not intimidated by the power of the man to whom she was speaking.

"I'm sorry that happened. I knew he would try to retaliate but he was quicker and nastier than I expected. But he's down to only one man. Everyone has left him except Dino Visucci," O'Connor told us.

"Gallo?" I asked, just to be sure.

"Gallo bailed. He didn't want to risk me coming after him as well. It's only a matter of days before Masarro's broke. I've put the shaft to him."

"But we didn't tell you what we found," Goren said, apparently mystified by the man's willingness to help even before knowing if we'd held up our end of the bargain.

"Dugan told me two of you came by. And he told me the others were at the police station. That's all I asked of you. The conditions were only that you try, not that you find something."

_Hmmm…an honest mobster_.

"We did find something," Eames said, taking a deep breath. I knew she was trying hard to get a handle on her emotions.

And I could understand a little of her devastation. When I was a kid, my mother had passed out drunk with a cigarette in her mouth. The ashes had dropped onto the couch and started a fire in our apartment. Lucky for me, I smelled the smoke pretty quickly and was able to get the fire out before it completely gutted the place. I was eight. My mother slept right through it and then in the morning, when she saw the mess, she beat the crap out of me. She blamed it all on me. For three days in a row, she beat me and when she took a break from that, I cleaned up the soot and ashes. My bruises healed in a week or so, but it took months to get the smell from my nose.

"There are no prints on the knife except for the ones made in blood. If Dugan had killed the guy, he would have prints without blood on the knife underneath the prints with the blood. They would still be detectable."

"Unless he wore gloves," O'Connor challenged, although even as he said it, it was clear he was pleased with the finding.

"True. But then why take them off to pull the knife out of the clerk's chest and then stay around until the cops show up?" Carolyn said. O'Connor nodded and took a deep breath.

"That's good news. Thank you. I owe you."

"No, I think we're even. We just have some unfinished business to get home to," Eames said. O'Connor stood and shook all of our hands.

"Come by the next time you get to Boston," he offered. "Drinks are on me."

We left Darcy's and drove to the parking garage. I wasn't worried anymore that someone was watching the car because we knew that Masarro was in New York. And Dino had to be there, too, because Masarro wasn't the type to get his hands dirty. As sure as I was that Masarro had ordered the fire, I was equally sure that Dino had started it.

All four of us got out of the car when Alex pulled in next to Carolyn's Camry. Eames' phone rang, so she stepped away to answer it. I looked at Carolyn and Goren.

"What are we going to do about this guy?" I asked quietly. "We've got him back in New York, but now he's starting fires? What the fuck?"

"He's not planning on getting caught," Goren replied. "If we catch him, he'll suicide by cop."

"Lucky you," I said sarcastically. "I wonder if he'll consider doing suicide by former cop?"

"Logan," Goren warned. I held up my hands.

"I know. Sorry. This is serious business. If he's willing to die, then he's going to be even more dangerous."

"Right. And he's got a hard-on for Alex," Carolyn added. Goren's face paled at hearing the words out loud, but he held himself together. It wasn't like that was new information.

"So we have got to find him first. Let's go to her apartment and see what we can find."

"What are you thinking?" I asked. He had that look. I'd spent enough time around him lately to know it.

"Do you think Masarro will be watching?" he asked. He does that. I think he's talking about one thing, and then he asks a random question that throws me completely off, and then I figure out that everything is connected. Of course, I look at Carolyn and she's nodding, like she knows exactly what he's talking about.

"My guess is yes," Carolyn said. "So we let him watch."

"Right."

"Watch what?" I asked.

"Watch us get there, watch us look around…" Goren paused, waiting to see if I was up to speed. _Oh._

"And watch us leave," I said at last.

"Right," he confirmed with a grin. "We'll let him follow us back to my place."

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" Carolyn asked. "It's the one place he hasn't found yet."

"That was Ross," Eames said as she hung up the phone and approached us. "The unit arrived just as Dino was trying to get into your place."

"What?" Carolyn yelled. "Did they catch him?"

"No, he got away, but there was no damage done. They have two black-and-whites sitting on your place right now. They'll stay there until we get these guys."

"That was quick thinking, Eames, having Ross send a unit out there. Thanks," I told her. She gave me a small smile.

"No problem. Ross says there's a unit outside of Dino's place, too, but there's no sign of him. And of course, there are BOLO's out for both Dino and Masarro. Every cop in New York is going to be looking for those two."

Eames paused and looked at the three of us. She can read Goren like a book, so it didn't surprise me when she asked, "So what's the plan when we get there?"

Goren filled her in quickly. It doesn't take long when those two don't even have to speak in complete sentences.

"So why your place?" Eames asked, coming back to Carolyn's original question.

"Cops are sitting on Logan's, but not mine."

"So we're going to lead him into a trap," Eames said. Goren nodded and gave her a grin.

"Carolyn and Logan can go ahead. He won't expect them to be there, too. We'll have the element of surprise."

"And no back up. That's a little dangerous, don't you think?"

"I think if he sees cops, he won't try anything. Do we want to end this thing tonight, or what?" We all nodded. That was a no-brainer.

"So let's do this. We'll meet at Alex's first."

"We need to bring Ross up to speed," Eames said. "He's going to meet us at my apartment."

Eames and Goren got into her car and Carolyn and I got into ours. Eames put the light back on top and I was a little afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep up with her.

"Step on it, Mike, or let me drive," Carolyn said with a laugh as we got onto the interstate. Eames was pulling away at an amazing speed. I slammed my foot on the gas and did my best to stay behind her.

"You think Bobby doesn't want back up there so that he can take Masarro out?" Carolyn asked.

"What do you think?" I was driving way too fast to risk looking at Carolyn, but I heard her sigh.

"I think he's a very non-violent man, but that the woman he loves has been threatened. That changes everything."

"Right."

"And I think he'll have to be quick if he wants to beat me to it."

I thought about Carolyn's words as I flew down the interstate. I didn't want my friend to lose his shield, and I didn't want Carolyn or Goren to go to jail for murder. I was going to have to be quicker than both of them.

TBC...


	12. Chapter 12

**Bobby POV**

* * *

I couldn't imagine what was going on in Alex's head as we drove into the city. _Her place had burned down_. It didn't get much worse than that. All of her personal belongings, just gone forever.

She didn't talk much during the drive. The silence was fine with me. I wasn't going to start spouting off platitudes just to try to make her feel better.

As we sped down the Van Wyck, now just a few miles from her place, she finally spoke.

"I guess I don't have to worry about trying to get that dead body-smell out." I looked at her and saw the beginnings of a smile.

"Or selling the place," I added. If she wanted to go with light-hearted, I was going to help her out.

"And it won't take me long to pack." Her attempt at levity failed and her voice cracked on the last word. My heart broke for her.

"Alex," I whispered as I leaned over to kiss the side of her head. "I'm so sorry this happened."

"I…it's just that…I had so many things there that I can never replace." I could understand that. Me, I had a shoebox full of memories that I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep. But Alex had so much more.

"I had these pictures," she continued. _Joe,_ I thought sadly_._ But of course, I couldn't begrudge her that. "I had such a collection."

"I'm sure your mom has some that she can get copies of," I told her.

"She wouldn't have these." _Her mom wouldn't have them? Were they_ _dirty pictures? Alex?_ I wasn't sure what to think. I mean, we had dirty pictures of the two of us, but those had come about strictly by accident. Well, most of them anyway.

And then she continued. "You know, I gave coffee to that girl once a week for two years."

Now I had no idea what to think. I was totally lost.

"You gave who coffee?" I asked finally when she didn't go on.

"Oh, sorry. My mind was wandering. Erica. I bought Erica coffee every Friday morning."

"Erica, the girl in CSU?"

"Yeah." Alex and I were normally so in synch that I was completely thrown by the fact that I was so clueless this time.

"Alex, you've got to help me out here. Our telepathy is on the fritz or something." She laughed, as I'd hoped, and then found a parking space a couple of blocks from the crime scene tape that now surrounded her building. She shut the car off and looked at me, putting her hand on the side of my face.

"Any time Erica came across a photo of you or me and you together, then she would make me a copy," she said softly. "I had quite the collection."

I was rendered speechless. _She had bribed the CSU photographer so that she could have pictures of me_?

"You only did it for two years?" I asked for lack of a better response. My brain was in vapor lock.

"I only had to bribe her for two years. She's been doing it for the past five just because she wants to. She thinks you're hot, and I guess it kind of turned into a fun pastime for her."

"Wait, so you've been getting pictures for seven years?"

"I told you. It was a good collection."

"I thought you'd be upset about pictures of Joe."

"Oh, Bobby," she said quietly. She leaned in and kissed me chastely. "I'm sure my mom has pictures of me and Joe, and that's fine. He was a part of my life for several years. But I'm not going to mourn the loss of any photos of him. It's not like I was going to bring them with me when I moved into your place anyway."

A sharp knock on my window startled us both. It was Logan. I opened the door and got out.

"I wasn't sure if you two were going to sit there and make eyes at each other all night, or if maybe you want to go catch us a mobster," he said.

"Detectives!" It was Ross. The four of us walked toward him and he held up the crime scene tape for us to enter. The fire had long-since been put out, but several fire trucks remained and quite a few cop cars as well. It was a varitable hotbed of activity.

"We've got men searching the perimeter," Ross said. "Usually firebugs like to come back and witness the clean-up effort."

"These guys aren't usually firebugs," Logan countered. "But I think they'll be here just to wait for us."

Ross looked at me and so I laid out the details of our plan.

"How do we know they won't follow Logan and Barek first?"

"He's focused on Alex," Carolyn said. "Once he sees her, he's not going to let her out of his sight."

"Well, I'm going ahead with you two then," Ross told Logan.

"Captain…" I began, but he interrupted.

"No arguments. I understand why you don't want black-and-whites in the area, but it won't hurt to have an extra gun."

We let the issue drop. Ross had been toeing the line right along with us this time, and if he wanted to come along for the finale, then who were we to argue?

We walked around the edge of the building, keeping clear of the hot zone. We wanted to make sure that Masarro had the chance to spot us.

"You know, a lot of my keepsakes are still in storage at my parents' house," Alex said, looking to the area that was once her home. "When I moved here, there wasn't much room for boxes, so I put some stuff in their basement."

"That's good. Your diplomas, childhood momentos, things like that?"

"Yeah. It could have been a lot worse," she said. It made me sad to realize how tough she had to be. And I couldn't hug her with Ross lurking around but I did manage a quick squeeze of her hand.

After about twenty minutes, Mike and Carolyn left with Ross. We told them we would be fifteen minutes behind them.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Alex asked me once the others were gone.

"I can't think of another way," I admitted. "He knows he's going down, but he's going to make every effort to take you down with him."

"All of us," she amended.

"I'm not worried about anyone but you."

"What did Mike tell you?" she asked as we started walking towards the car.

"About what?" I asked, although I knew exactly what she meant.

"About Masarro's plans for me. I've never seen you so intent on catching a suspect before."

"Sure you have. And he's not a suspect, he's an arsonist. And a killer."

"I've seen you get consumed with the chase. I've seen you get inside people's heads. But this time…I don't know. It's different. You're intense. Even more so than usual, which is saying a lot. You don't want to arrest Masarro. You want to kill him."

"Don't you?" I asked, worried about her statement. Because she was right, I did want to kill him. I felt the urge so strongly that I wasn't sure I would be able to control it when the time came. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

"Yes," she admitted. "But I won't. Not unless I have to."

"Are you worried because of who my father is?" I didn't realize how much that question would piss her off.

"No," she replied sharply. She shoved me hard, pushing me back against the car. She stood close and I could feel the irritation rolling off of her.

"Bobby, don't you ever think that. I _never_ think about that. Don't bring that man into this. He's nothing to you, I've told you that. He had no part in making you who you are."

"I'm worried about _you_," she continued, slowly reining in her anger. "I'm worried about what it would do to you if you let yourself kill him. Because you're not that kind of man. And it might feel good for the first hour, hell maybe even for a week or two, but pretty soon it'll get to you."

"You're right," I said, overwhelmed by the force of her emotions. It amazed me that she could know me so well. She was simply the perfect woman for me, and there was no way I ever wanted to be without her. _And Masarro wants to take her away._

And that thought brought back the clenching in my gut. It got me angry again. It was quite the conundrum.

"You ready?" she asked after she witnessed the emotions that surely played across my face. _She knows me_, I reminded myself. _She knows how hard this is_. I nodded.

"Good. Let's go get us a couple of gangsters."

Alex found a place to park near my building, but before we left the car, we checked our weapons one last time. They were good and we knew it, but the action was a reassurance.

"Do you think they followed?" I asked as we climbed out and looked around.

"I drove slowly enough. They certainly could have if they wanted to."

It was difficult to act casual, but I think we pulled it off. We walked into my building. It was almost two in the morning, so everything was fairly quiet.

"Elevator?" she asked. I shook my head.

"Stairs." She nodded and I followed her into the stairwell. Every nerve in my body was on full alert, straining to hear any sound.

We climbed the stairs and Alex stood back to wait for me while I opened the door. The hairs on the back of my neck were on end as I fiddled with the key.

And then it all happened too quickly.

The door behind us opened and Dino stepped out, grabbing Alex with a hand over her mouth and one around her waist. I reached for my gun, but then Dino moved his hand up from her waist towards her throat and I realized he had a knife. A big one.

"I wouldn't do that, Detective Goren." It was Masarro. He was in the apartment behind Dino. "Hurry up and step inside before your friends hear us. I would hate to have to kill everybody."

Dino pulled Alex backwards into the apartment and I followed. Masarro closed the door behind us and threw the locks.

Complete and utter terror was running rampant through my system. I had to slow it down or I would never get us out of this. _Focus, Goren. Be a cop_. The voice inside my head belonged to Alex. I looked into her eyes and despite the fear that she had to be feeling, she was calmly sending me a message. _We can do this_.

I took a deep breath. _One step at a time, Goren_.

I looked around, concerned for my elderly neighbor whose apartment they had broken into, but she was nowhere in sight.

"The old broad is fine," Masarro said. "If I were you, I'd be more concerned with the lovely Detective Eames. Now throw your gun on the floor or I'll have Dino start slicing and dicing right now."

TBC...


	13. Chapter 13

**Alex POV**

* * *

I've got to admit, I wasn't expecting Dino to come out of that other apartment. My heart jumped into my throat when I felt his hands on me and for that first instant, I was in full panic mode.

But then I got control of myself and I remembered who I was dealing with. Masarro wanted me to suffer. And the fact that Dino didn't stab me right away meant that was still the plan. So I had time. And I had Bobby. Bobby could talk a starving man out of his last morsel of food.

But first I had to get _Bobby_ out of panic mode. I'm sure the visual of me with a knife to my throat was one he would be carrying with him for awhile, but we would deal with that later. _Come on, Goren_, I chanted in my head. I kept my eyes on him, silently willing him to meet my gaze. And then he did. We breathed together for a moment and then I saw the shift in him. He was back.

As Bobby tossed his gun onto the floor, Dino felt around for mine and pulled it out of the holster. He tossed it next to Bobby's. Masarro bent down and picked mine up and pointed it at Bobby.

"I am going to enjoy this so much," Masarro crowed.

"Hey Dino," Bobby said. I felt Dino tense behind me. He still held the knife tightly against my throat but he had moved his other hand off of my mouth.

"Did you know that Masarro here ordered the hit on Paulie? Mariella killed him."

"Shut up!" Masarro shouted. "That's not true, Dino. He's just trying to get to you. You," he continued, pointing at Bobby. "You talk to me, not him."

"He had two taps to the back of the head, Dino," I said. "Who else kills people like that? Do you think we did it?"

"Shut her up, Dino!" Masarro yelled. But Dino loosened his grip on me slightly. Bobby started up again.

"It was Mariella. I don't know why she did it, but she did, and I bet she called the old man here first."

"That's enough. Bring her over here." Masarro used the gun and waved it toward the island kitchen counter. Dino started pulling me in that direction. I struggled with him, but he was a pro and he had quite the size advantage. In a minute, I was shoved up against the counter with Dino's weight behind me. He set the knife down and then held my hand down flat on the counter. Masarro stood on the other side of the counter. He picked up the knife in one hand and kept the gun pointed at Bobby with the other.

"You're a tough lady," he said to me while still looking at Bobby. "You didn't make a fuss over the present I left for you. You didn't scream when Dino grabbed you. I wonder if I can make you scream?"

I fought hard against Dino to pull my hand off the counter top, but I couldn't get free.

"Hold her still," Masarro said gruffly to Dino.

"Dino, let her go," Bobby said. "You don't want to do this. He killed your cousin!"

"Paulie was a fuckin' idiot," Dino said finally. My heart sank. I thought we could get to him. I thought he would bow out of this fight, but he didn't. Masarro laughed and ran the blade slowly over my fingers.

"Which one should I start with?" he asked Bobby. "I'll let you pick."

And then all hell broke loose.

The door was kicked open and in came Logan, followed closely by Barek and Ross.

"Drop the weapon and let her go!" Logan shouted. He pointed his gun at Masarro and the others were pointing at Dino.

Masarro fired my gun haphazardly in Bobby's general direction and then brought the knife down, hard. I bit back a cry of pain as the blade pierced through my hand.

A hail of shots rang out, hitting Masarro in the chest and carrying him halfway across the kitchen. Dino let go of me with one hand to reach for the knife, but his loosened grip allowed me to fight back. I struck out blindly behind me and caught him in the side of the head just as he pulled the knife from my hand. _Damn that hurt_.

"Eames!" Bobby called out as he made a dive for Dino's legs. He caught him at the knees and all three of us went to the ground. It was a scrum. The three of us scrambled madly for position, but in the end, Dino managed to get behind me and once again, he brought the knife to my throat. He dragged me back to my feet and Bobby got to his, a few feet away but unarmed and unable to do anything considering the position I was in.

"Drop the knife!" Logan yelled as he moved in us.

"Let me out of here, or I'll kill her."

"Last chance," Barek said as she settled in beside Logan, her sites aimed at Dino's head.

"Your boss is dead," Ross called out, having gone to check on Masarro. "Give it up."

Dino's arm flexed fractionally, bringing the knife slightly away from my skin. _Now_, I thought. And Bobby was with me. He lunged for Dino as I made my legs go limp, letting all of my weight drop towards the floor. Dino tried to hold onto me, but the force of Bobby sent them both sideways, back towards the foyer. The knife went skittering across the floor.

Dino crawled after it.

"Get out of the way, Goren!" Logan called. Bobby rolled to the right just as Dino grabbed the knife. He held it up over his head, ready to bring it down on Bobby, when two shots rang out. The knife clattered to the floor and Dino fell like a sack of lead.

I looked up from my position on the floor and saw that Barek and Logan had each shot Dino. Two taps to the head. Poetic justice, I suppose.

Masarro was a bloody mess. It would take Liz a while to figure out exactly whose shot had been the fatal blow for the mobster. At first glance, I counted at least seven chest wounds.

"You okay, Eames?" Ross asked as he holstered his weapon.

"I'm fine," I said, feeling a little dazed. And then I realized I was still sitting on the floor. And I was bleeding profusely from my hand. Ross walked off to look through the apartment. Bobby hurried to me and bent down close, pulling my head against his chest. I closed my eyes and breathed him in.

"This place is clear. Where's the lady who lives here?" Ross asked when he came back. Bobby answered without pulling away from me.

"She's probably at her sister's. She goes there a few nights a week."

"Well, she sure picked a good night to go," Logan added.

"I'm…uh…I'm going to uh…go next door and call this in," Ross said. He must have just noticed our intimate position considering he began to stutter uncharacteristically. I heard his footsteps as he left the apartment and went across the hall.

Bobby finally eased back from me and took a look at my hand. He reached up and grabbed a towel from the counter top and wrapped it tightly around my hand.

"God, Alex, are you okay?" he asked as he helped me stand. I was a little wobbly and he kept his arms around me.

"I'm okay. I'll probably need a few stitches, but I'll be fine."

"Thank God," he whispered. I happily let him hold me for a few more moments and then I stepped away. I swiped the hair from my face and looked at Logan.

"How'd you guys know we were in here?" I asked him.

"We heard the key in the lock, but then you didn't come in, so we checked the hall."

"And?"

"Do I have to keep reminding you guys that I used to be a detective?" he asked with a slow grin. I loved him for cracking a joke. I smiled back at him.

"Are you sure?" I asked. He was so much fun to tease. He rolled his eyes dramatically.

"You guys still have ash on your shoes. There were prints on the floor."

"I'm sorry guys," Carolyn said. "I really blew this one."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't think he'd let Alex out of his sight, but I was wrong. He must have known the trap was coming, and he followed us instead to try to get a step ahead."

"It was pretty smart. But very unusual," Bobby said. "There's no way you could have predicted that behavior."

"And it worked out fine. You got him, didn't you?" I asked.

"Well…_I_ got him," Logan said.

"No, I don't think so," Carolyn argued back. "You always shoot wide left. I'm the one that got him."

I started laughing. The adrenaline was replaced by a tremendous rush of relief and I almost felt giddy.

"Alex, are you sure you're okay?" Bobby asked me with concern. In the distance, I could hear sirens approaching. The ambulances were coming and cops would need our statements…but it was all good.

"I'm fine. I'm just so relieved that this is over."

Ross came back into the apartment just before back-up arrived.

"Let me handle the statements," he said. "We can all meet in my office in the morning and take care of everything."

"What's the chief going to say?" Logan asked.

"Let me worry about that. An escaped Don and his right-hand man were killed while holding two detectives at gun and knife point. I think this will turn out fine."

The paramedics came in and took a look at my hand. I didn't want to go to the hospital, not yet anyway. The EMT secured the gash with steri-strips before wrapping it with gauze and medical tape. He warned me that if I didn't come to get it stitched within twenty-four hours then they may not be able to stitch it at all and it wouldn't properly heal. I ignored him. It had been a long enough day without adding a trip to the hospital.

"Have you been checked out, Logan? You look like hell," Ross told him. And he did, especially considering bruises tend to look worse before they get better.

"It's not the first beating I've ever taken," he said, waving off the paramedic. "I'll be fine."

Liz arrived after a few more minutes and made short work of packing up the bodies.

"I'll get them on the table first thing tomorrow," she assured us. "I can stitch up that hand for you if you want, Detective."

"I may take you up on that. It'll be better than four hours in an ER."

"You all okay otherwise?" she asked. The worry lines were etched clearly across her face.

"We're fine, Doc," Logan said. "Thanks for your help."

"Well, it was the least I could do."

I was ready to go back to Bobby's, so we excused ourselves and headed across the hall. Ross was still finishing things up and Liz was going to wait for him. Logan and Carolyn followed us out.

"Hey, I want to thank you guys," Logan said once we were all in the hall.

"You want to thank us?" I asked in surprise. "I think it's the other way around."

"When I called you a few days ago, you dropped everything and came to Boston," Carolyn said softly. "I don't know what I would've done without you guys there to help."

"Logan escaped all by himself," Bobby reminded them. Mike shook his head.

"Don't sell yourself short. I'm not going to get all gushy on you, but just accept my thanks." Logan held out his hand and Bobby grabbed it to give him a shake and then Logan pulled him into a hug.

"Thank you," Logan said again. Bobby didn't say anything. I don't think he could. I couldn't remember a time when I had ever seen him hugged by another man, and a wave of affection for Logan swept through me. There was so much more to him than I had ever given him credit for. It was perfectly clear to me why Carolyn loved him.

"You guys want to come in for a beer?" I offered. It was late, but it would be awhile before the energy subsided. And besides that, I was extremely grateful to them for their help.

"Nah, but we'll catch up tomorrow night," Mike said as he took Carolyn by the hand. "Get some rest."

"You, too."

"Oh, and Eames," he said before he walked away. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear. "Your boss is right across the hall. You might not want to yell out _God, don't stop_ at the top of your lungs any time soon."

I think the blush started at my toes and went all the way to the top of my head. But Mike just grinned at me and they walked away.

"What did he say?" Bobby asked curiously as we went into his apartment.

"Oh, please don't even ask," I said, shaking my head. I tossed my jacket on the table and looked around.

"So, you still want this to be home?" Bobby asked quietly from behind me.

"It is home."

"I'll make more room for your things in the dresser, I promise." I turned around and slipped easily into his arms. I kept my bandaged left hand still on his back, but my right hand stroked up and down, each time drifting a little lower.

"You know, you made me another promise," I said cryptically. In fact, Bobby had made me a lot of promises, and I had no doubt that he would keep every one.

"To love, honor and cherish you?" he asked, but I could tell from his tone that he knew exactly which promise I was talking about, and that wasn't it. It was after four in the morning and I should have been exhausted, but I guess my body missed that memo.

"Isn't there something in the vows that talks about a nice, hard fu…" His mouth crashed down onto mine, stealing the word from my lips. It might have been several hours since he had pushed me up against that hotel wall in Boston, but the emotion of tonight's events still had us on edge. And I never had reached those heights I'd been looking for.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said, his rough voice a contradiction of his words.

"You couldn't possibly," I countered as he picked me up and turned me around, pushing me into his kitchen wall.

His hands went to work on the buttons of my shirt while I marked up his neck with my lips.

"Hurry," I said, having lost all patience. Bobby's fingers were struggling with the delicate buttons, so I reached down and ripped the fabric apart. He growled appreciatively and pulled his shirt over his head, once again keeping me in place with his thigh. But then he moved away.

"Bobby, I swear…"

"Sshh…I can't get either of our pants off when I'm holding you up like that." _Oh._ Okay, so I was _really_ getting impatient.

As soon as he unbuttoned them, I grabbed his jeans with one hand, pulling them roughly from his hips and taking his boxers right along with them. He kicked them out of the way while unbuttoning mine at the same time. And then he picked me up again, and I was anticipating the slam of the wall at my back, but instead he was gentle. He held me against him and slowly pulled me down onto him until he was buried deep inside.

"I thought we should slow it down a little," he murmured. Who was I to argue? Fast or slow, I was rapidly approaching the point of no return. And Bobby was a master of the game, bringing us both right up to the edge together. I didn't care who called or who knocked on the door, there was not going to be any stopping this time around.

And there wasn't. It was a miracle. No interruptions, no pictures, no crisis.

"Hey Alex," Bobby whispered as we settled on his couch together. We didn't want to get in the bed when we knew we had to be back up in only a couple of hours.

"Yeah?" I ran my fingers through his hair, loving the feel of the soft, graying curls.

"You were right, about not killing Masarro. I would've regretted it if I did it out of anger. I mean, I would've done it in a second to save you, but to kill him just to get him to leave us alone…"

"Well, it was tempting."

"Thanks for reminding me who I am."

"I always know who you are," I told him. "You're Bobby Goren. You're my husband."

"I like the sound of that," he said. He closed his eyes and a smile spread across his face.

"Me, too."

**The End**


End file.
